Sierra2theSea

California Exporters Enjoy Slight Gain Over Same Time Last Year As PC Market Continues Its Decline

April 5, 2013 – LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – Even if it isn’t immediately apparent, California’s export trade this February represented a modest increase over the same month last year, according to an analysis by Beacon Economics of foreign trade data released this morning by the U.S. Commerce Department.

The state’s exports in February 2013 totaled $12.70 billion, which might appear to be less than the $12.85 billion recorded in February 2012. However, 2012 was a Leap Year, adding an extra trading day to that month.

“Last February saw exporters benefit from the Sadie Hawkins Day Bump,” said Jock O’Connell, Beacon Economics’ international trade adviser. “This February, Sadie sat out the dance.”

When adjusting for both inflation and that bonus trading day last February, California’s February 2013 export trade showed an increase of 1.1% over the same month one year earlier.

The gain came as the result of a 4.3% real increase in shipments of manufactured products and an even more robust 5.9% rise in exports of non-manufactured goods (chiefly agricultural commodities and raw materials).  Restraining further growth in the state’s overall export trade was a relatively sharp 9.6% fall-off in re-exported goods.

Because detailed data on specific export commodities and their destinations can vary abruptly from month to month for a variety of factors, Beacon Economics’ analysis compares the latest three months with the corresponding period twelve months earlier.

That analysis reveals that California’s export of manufactured products continues to be slowed by an ongoing decline in shipments of electronic components used in the manufacture of personal computers. In the most recent three-month period (December 2012-February 2013), exports of these products were down 24.9% from the same period a year earlier.

“The chief culprit here is the growing popularity of smartphones and tablets, which has been shrinking consumer demand for PCs and curtailing trade in PC components,” O’Connell said.

Interestingly, in terms of employment, the manufacturing sector in California is doing better than initially reported. Recently released 2013 Benchmark revisions by the California Employment Development Department show that the state gained roughly 19,400 more manufacturing jobs through the end of 2012 than originally indicated, with most of the upward revisions coming from durable goods. “Compared to the rest of the nation, manufacturing employment growth has not been a bright spot in California,” said Beacon Economics’ Director of Economic Research Jordan Levine. “But the precipitous declines we were seeing in manufacturing jobs have largely been arrested.”

California’s exports to Mexico, the state’s leading foreign market, were down by 19.2% in the latest three-month period, largely because PC components have constituted as much as 30% of California’s export trade with its southern neighbor as recently as 2011.

Shipments to the state’s number two market, Canada, rose slightly by 1.2%, while exports to its third largest export market, China, slipped by 1.3%.

Perhaps surprisingly, given headlines about Europe’s persistent economic and financial woes, California exports to the European Union were up 3.9% over the latest three months, while exports to the Pacific Rim rose by just 2.2%.

Airborne shipments currently account for 44.3% of all state exports. By contrast, 34.0% of the state’s export trade went by sea, while the remaining 21.7% was transported overland to Mexico and Canada.

The overall outlook for the state’s exporters is mixed, with the rising value of the dollar and the risk of competitive currency devaluations presenting the most evident negatives for California exporters.

“Of course, all of this assumes that Kim Jong-un doesn’t do anything rash in the coming weeks,” said O’Connell.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — When Jose Chavez Gonzalez moved to the United States from El Salvador, he took any job he could get — stocking warehouses, construction, cleaning houses and working in a meat processing plant.
But unlike most of the other immigrants he worked alongside, Chavez, 38, was a doctor with eight years of medical training. He came to the U.S. in the mid-1990’s to be with his family, but like all doctors from other countries, he still had to pass the U.S. medical boards and go through at least three years of residency in order to practice here. The process can be both expensive and time consuming, so during the day he worked various menial jobs and at night he studied for the boards.
“I had to do it. And I wouldn’t complain,” says Chavez. “It was OK to me. I mean, of course medicine is my passion, but since I didn’t have a license here, I couldn’t practice it.”
A quarter of U.S. doctors are foreign-born, mostly from countries like India that focus on training ­­medical students to work in the U.S.  Many other immigrant physicians never become American doctors, particularly those who come from Latin American countries like Chavez.
But a program at the University of California is seeking to change that, while at the same time helping to address the shortage of primary care doctors in the state. The UCLA International Medical Graduate Program offers Latino doctors a stipend along with board preparation classes, mentorship and references to help them find a good residency slot in primary care. In return, the doctors pledge to work in an underserved area of California for two or three years.
The program at UCLA was founded by Dr. Patrick Dowling and Dr. Michelle Bholat to help address the shortage of primary care doctors in the state, and a particular shortage of doctors of Latin American heritage. Though about 40 percent of the state’s population is Hispanic, only 5 percent of its doctors are.
Nearly half of the estimated 5 million Californians expected to be newly eligible for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act are Latino, and Dowling says it’s key that patients see a doctor who understands their language and culture.
“You can either do total body cat scans on everybody or you can sit down and try to understand what the patient is saying and why and what’s going on in their life,” says Dowling.
The program is small. But slowly, it’s making a dent.  Chavez was able to pass his medical exams in two years. Today, he’s hard at work as a first-year resident at the Riverside County Regional Medical Center. Most of his patients are Hispanic, and many are immigrants like him.
Graciela Jauregui came to the clinic with severe pain in her knee. She was born in Mexico but has lived in the U.S. for 17 years, working as a housekeeper. She’s 62 and doesn’t speak English. She says she always prefers to see a doctor who can actually understand her.
Speaking through an interpreter, Jauregui says, “All doctors are good people, but when they speak Spanish it’s better.”
Chavez’s fluency in Spanish is prized by his boss, Riverside’s chief of family medicine Dr. Geoffrey Leung. Leung says the clinic employs translators, but they are often in short supply. And even with a translator, important details can be lost.

Program founders Dr. Michelle Bholat and Dr. Patrick Dowling (Photo by Jenny Gold/KHN)
“No matter how good of a translator you have, your concern is that you may lose some part of the integrity of the message,” Leung says.
So far, the UCLA program has placed 54 Hispanic doctors into family medicine training programs – Dowling says that’s almost as many as came from all 10 California medical schools put together.
Dowling says hundreds and maybe thousands of immigrant doctors from Latin America could be practicing, but are instead working other – often menial – jobs. And that’s a wasted resource.
“I was just reviewing an applicant this morning who’s currently working in McDonalds,” Dowling says. “And I thought of the irony: She’s serving people Big Macs right now and what she could be doing is explaining to people that isn’t what you want you want to be eating.”
Chavez, for his part, is happy to be treating patients again: “[It] gave me the opportunity to stop working and focus full-time on studying. Without the program, I would still be working on construction.”
Kaiser Health News

Fresno State’s Craig School of Business San Joaquin Valley Business Conditions Index advanced for a fourth consecutive month. During March the overall index expanded to 58.7 from 55.6 in February. An index of greater than 50 indicates an expansionary economy over the course of the next three to six months.
“The overall index jumped to its highest level in three years pushed higher primarily by construction and manufacturing expansion,” said Dr. Ernie Goss, a research associate from the Craig School who produces the index.
The index is a leading economic indicator from a survey of individuals making company purchasing decisions in the counties of Fresno, Madera, Kings and Tulare. The index uses the same methodology as that of the national Institute for Supply Management.
Survey results indicated that federal spending sequestration is having little impact on local business confidence. “This month we asked companies how the federal spending sequestration was affecting their company. Approximately 90 percent indicated that the cuts were having no impact on their company. The remaining 10 percent reported only modest impacts. None of the businesses reported significant impacts,” said Goss.
Other survey findings:
Employment moved above the growth neutral threshold for a fifth straight month. The job index climbed to 57.7 from February’s 51.1. While hiring has increased, most gains are among temporary and hourly workers. Giving the overall upward economic trend nationally, Goss expects to see healthy increases in the hiring of permanent works in the months ahead.
Wholesale prices declined to 60.4 from 66 in February according to the prices-paid index, which tracks the cost of raw materials and supplies. This month survey participants were asked how much they expected prices for their company’s products and services to increase in comparison to last year. On average, supply managers expect prices to grow by one percent for 2013, or less than the current rate of growth in the U.S. consumer price index.
Inventories expanded for businesses in March. The inventory index grew to 51.9 from 51.3 in February. Goss says the sluggish growth this is an indicator of weak business confidence.
Trade strengthened for March with a reading of 51.7, up from February’s 44.2. March imports expanded for the month with an import index of 56.3, up significantly from 51.9 in March.
Other components of the March Business Conditions Index were new orders at 62, up from 58.1 in February; production or sales at 63.5, up from February’s 55.6; and delivery lead-time at 58.4, down from 59.6 in February.