What better way to solve the state's employment problem than spending on critical infrastructure?
So how are California's workers faring on this, the day after their Labor Day weekend?
Abysmally. God-awfully. Consider a few grim particulars:
California ranks third among the 50 states in the percentage of its workers without work. On average, the unemployed Californian is jobless for a record-high eight months, according to a new report from the California Budget Project.
Some key sectors of the California economy have all but vanished. Housing construction, the primary engine of the Southern California and the inland California economy for much of the last decade, leads the list. Between 2005 and 2009, the number of residential construction permits fell by 83%. The number of employed residential construction workers plunged from 487,000 to 77,000. And over just the last two months, the number of home sales has again declined sharply, now that federal stimulus benefits for buyers have trickled to a halt.
In September, 2009 Atlantic Monthly named 
