L.A.'s grim employment picture

Yes, the jobless rate has fallen, but at 11.8 percent as of December it's still very high. And even that number understates the depth of the local employment problem, as laid out in a report from the Economic Roundtable. This helps explain why L.A. County's unemployment rate is so much higher than, say, OC's. A big problem is underemployment, where someone has job but not at the salary or at the skill level he's trained for. From the report:

--Over a fifth of Los Angeles County's labor force is unemployed or underemployed.

--Over a third of the county's population lives in a household where one or more breadwinners are underemployed.

--LA's underemployment rate for workers with a college degree is 69 percent higher than the national rate. Job losses are greatest in education, professional services, and financial activities.

--32 percent of LA workers without a high school diploma are underemployed. Job losses are greatest in construction, personal and repair services, retail trade, hotels and restaurants, and manufacturing.

--27 percent of Latino workers in LA are underemployed.

--32 percent of African American workers in LA are under-employed.

--38 percent of workers under 25 are under-employment, the highest rate of any labor force group.

And so on. I've always found these underemployment figures to be a little tricky because they're inherently subjective. To feel that you're over-qualified and underpaid could be as much an aspirational issue as an economic one. But even assuming some exaggeration, this is a huge problem.