California Economy Sees Improvement, Continuing Trouble

May 26, 2011

Sundar Pichai, VP of Product Management for Google, displays a Samsung notebook running on the Chrome operating system at the Google IO Developers Conference in San Francisco, May 11, 2011.

California's economy is still huge, even though recession has slowed growth. If California were a country, it would have the world's eighth largest economy, with farming, high technology, manufacturing, entertainment and tourism.

International trade is rebounding. It increased dramatically last year. Economist Nancy Sidhu of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation says the state's high tech sector is also doing well.

"[That success is due in part to] new Internet applications, new applications for mobile phones, and of course, social media," noted Sidhu. "And those companies, Apple and Google, and you name them - all of the others that follow. They're hiring. They're looking for the best and the brightest."

Retail sales have partially made up the losses of the recession, and some consumers are buying again. But wholesale merchant Liang Liang is caught between high costs and low demand. He says his imported home decorations and tourist souvenirs are not yet selling well, and his cost for cotton T-shirts has risen 25 percent since January.

"Yes, still very bad, I think. For me, it's still very bad," said Liang.