Economy

There could be ominous news for the Inland Empire in the latest report on U.S. employment. The economy create only 142,000 jobs in September as the unemployment rate remained at 5.1 percent, according to data released Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor. Virtually everyone agreed the report was weak …

Anyone who attended the Sixth Annual Inland Southern California Economic Forecast Thursday must have left feeling optimistic about the state of the two-county region. Economist Chris Thornberg, a founding partner with Beacon Economics in Los Angeles, painted a rosy picture of both the U.S. and California economies before the crowd …

The Halloween shopping season is starting to heat up, and so far Disney products are in the lead, at least at one Inland Empire store. “We’re starting to sell more Halloween stuff, and so far Disney is the most popular, although it’s still early,” said Jason Murphy, manager of Party …

 Both locally and nationally, the retail industry will apparently hire the same number of people this year that it hired last year. Still, the projected hiring numbers released so far aren’t bad, and the market is a lot better now than it was a few years ago. If the first …

Gas prices continued to drop this week. Statewide, one gallon of regular gasoline sold for an average of $3.04, down from $3.14 last week and $3.49 one month ago, according to AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report. The national average was $2.28, down four cents during the past week and 33 …

California’s unemployment rate fell to 6.1 percent in August as the state added 36,300 new non-farm jobs during the month. Employers in California have added more than two million jobs since the recovery officially began in February 2010, according to data released Friday by the state’s Employment Development Department. The …