Howard Roth Quotations

We're seeing increasingly broad-based growth in jobs. It's a little bit better-distributed, which is good.

The outflow hasn't changed much, but fewer people are coming here. Houses were already unaffordable, but they've become more so in the last two years.

Last year was better than we thought, particularly in the second half.

That's the major risk, but nobody has told the construction sector in California because they were again the leading job growth sector (in December).

What's happening is not so much that more people are leaving but that fewer people are coming. Our housing prices are pretty daunting, even more so than two years ago.

We went into the new year with pretty good momentum and those job gains are spread across nine of the 11 major industry sectors. There's better distribution of job growth now than there was last year at this time.

Enough schools may have started earlier this year, and, as a result, the increase in employment came in August and not in September.

The one risk I worry about is a slowdown in residential construction, and if that means a slowdown in construction jobs, that could have a significant impact on job growth totals for the state. A lot of our job gains have been construction and construction-related. At one time, as much as 40 percent of job gains were related to building things.

It's a rude interruption of that string of nine straight monthly job gains.

It's pretty good job growth. Revised numbers show job growth was stronger than we thought in the second half of last year.

The consumer will be feeling a little bit squeezed in 2006.

I'm worried about housing prices. It's getting a little scary.