Economy

National retail sales took a slight dip last week. With demand varying in different retail categories, sales dropped 1.5 percent nationwide for the week ending March 22 compared with the previous week, according to data released Tuesday by the International Council of Shopping Centers in New York. The good news …

Hiring in the Inland Empire should improve as the year progresses, a major personnel agency said this week. Employers who want to hire new workers are expected to outnumber those who are considering letting people go by 3 to 1 during the second quarter, according to the Manpower Employment Outlook …

Six students from Yucaipa Christian School have placed third in a regional art contest and will advance to the state finals March 29 at the Riverside Convention Center. Elementary school students Lily Bosse, Cameron Dominguez, Savannah Hewitt, Leo Walt, Saela Wardlow and Joshua Waters competed in the regional round of …

Some good news on the employment front: an estimate 37,400 jobs were created last year in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. That’s almost three times as much as state officials first estimated, according to a report first published in The Press-Enterprise. The 3.1 percent job growth for 2013 came after …

The February report on manufacturing in the Inland Empire is definitely mixed. First, the good news: the purchasing manager’s index for last month was 50.3, the sixth consecutive month that the index was above 50, according to the monthly report by the Institute of Applied Research and Policy Analysis at …

Study by non-profit agency says the two-county region still has to recover most of the jobs it lost during the recession, and that could take a few more years That economic recovery you keep hearing about in the Inland Empire isn’t here yet, and it might not happen for a …