Ken Leaverton sat quietly in the chilly lobby of the Workforce Employment Center in Riverside, still shocked he'd found himself on the front lines of the Inland Empire's ever-growing ranks of the unemployed.
For two decades, Leaverton delivered packaged sweets to supermarkets across Southern California. But when his company, Mother's Cookies, unexpectedly filed for bankruptcy last month, the 51-year-old Riverside resident was suddenly scrambling to find a way to support his family.
"It's different looking for a job now," said Leaverton, who was waiting to join a computer class to make himself more marketable to potential employers. "In 20 years, everything has changed. You used to look in the newspaper for a job. Now it's the Internet. And I type with one finger."
If the Inland Empire is one of the birthplaces of the current recession, it is also at the forefront of the nation's growing pain over joblessness -- with the highest unemployment rate of any large metropolitan area in the country.
State numbers released Friday show the Riverside, San Bernardino and Ontario area is now suffering from its highest unemployment rate in 13 years at 9.5% in October -- 3 percentage points higher than the national rate and 1.3 points higher than the state's rate of 8.2%.
Ignited by the collapse of the local housing market, which decimated the construction and lending industries, the wave of unemployment has trickled into almost every area, including retail, manufacturing and local government.
The region's troubles are set against a backdrop of growing unemployment throughout the nation. The U.S. Department of Labor reported last week that a growing number of jobless Americans are turning to government assistance. The number of workers collecting unemployment insurance payments has now reached a 25-year high at 3.95 million.
Meanwhile, the percentage of people unemployed in the Inland Empire has more than doubled from a year ago, and some experts predict the situation will worsen before it improves.
"It's a perfect storm," said Brad Kemp, director of regional research for Beacon Economics, which recently conducted the second annual Inland Empire Economic Forecast Conference.
"It was one of the fastest-growing places in America," he said. "And when you have that kind of growth, you have the potential for loss."
