“California’s economy is actually healthier than popular or pundit opinion would suggest,” says Christopher Thornberg, president of Beacon Economics. Despite the unacceptably high 11.7 percent unemployment rate – 2 million Californians still out of work – the economic trend line is up. “Considering that employment is a lagging indicator of overall health, it is clear that California is solidly in a new growth phase,” Thornburgh says in his firm’s latest employment analysis.

Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, notes that California has added close to 250,000 jobs in the past year, a bigger percentage gain – albeit a paltry 1.7 percent – than the nation as a whole.

“The industry pattern is positive for the future with gains in professional, technical, scientific and information services, and a rebound in manufacturing activity and continuing export gains,” says Levy.

Nationally, chimes in Ken Rosen, chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate Urban Economics at UC Berkeley‘s Haas School of Business, “employment growth will be stronger than thought.” In his annual Economic and Real Estate Outlook presented last week, Rosen forecasts a net gain of 1.6 million jobs in 2012.

And which urban areas lead the pack, employment-wise? San Francisco and San Jose (Silicon Valley). Despite an 8.1 percent unemployment rate, “San Francisco is No. 1 in the country for job growth,” thanks largely to the latest tech boom.

But, the recovery remains “slow and choppy,” said Rosen, and can be derailed by, for example, Europe’s debt crisis.

And it’s not working for those who aren’t in the professions Levy mentions above, or for the millions caught in the jaws of the mortgage meltdown. (More than a quarter of the subprime loans out there are 30 days or more delinquent, according to Rosen’s report.)

“This has become a bifurcated economy,” and we need people in Washington who will honestly step up and help fix it,” he said.

Yes, the flip side of this year’s Thanksgiving.

Help needed: Natural Resources, the well-known and much appreciated pregnancy and early parenting resource center on San Francisco’s Valencia Street, is in trouble.

Voted this year’s “Best Shop for Parents To Be” by Bay Guardian readers, the 25-year-old center is on the verge of going out of business. Tough economic times have taken their toll and attempts to get new financial partners or even sell the business have failed. So the owners have turned elsewhere for help in getting $45,000 by 11:59 p.m. Monday to keep the doors open.

As of Wednesday afternoon, a community fundraising drive had raised $33,246. If the goal is not reached by the deadline, I’m told Natural Resources will return all the donations received ( www.naturalresources-sf.com).

Merit badges: Every year since 2000, the Consumer Electronics Association has inducted inventors and industry leaders into its Hall of Fame. Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell were among the first, along with Bay Area alums, including the late Philo T. Farnsworth, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell and Ray Dolby of San Francisco’s Dolby Systems.

Steve Jobs made it into the hall in 2009, five years after Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

Joining that illustrious company this year are two more from the Bay Area – retired SanDisk CEO Eli Harari and Sam Runco, a pioneer of large-screen video projectors, whose company, Runco International, trademarked the name “home theater.”

“His namesake company became the most innovative and highly respected projection television makers in the world,” said the association.

Harari, co-founder of SanDisk, a multinational company headquartered in Milpitas, came up with a precursor to flash memory and “helped launch the flash memory revolution to become the global leader in flash memory cards,” the organization said.

One other inductee with Bay Area connections is Robert Metcalfe, who, with fellow computer scientist David Boggs, invented the Ethernet while working at Xerox PARC in Palo Alto in 1973. Metcalfe later went on to found 3Com.

Blogging: www.sfgate.com/columns/bottomline. Facebook page: sfg.ly/doACKM. Tweeting: @andrewsross. E-mail: bottomline@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page D – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/26/BUR61M3K5M.DTL