The columnist seeks to show that California's high unemployment is tied to an imploded construction sector; however, on a county-by-county basis there is no significant correlation between construction jobs lost and unemployment levels (the R^2 value has to be close to 1 for reliable correlation). This suggests that either the construction workers who lost their jobs had long commutes (so jobs usually showed up in different counties than their unemployment filings) or (I believe more likely) construction is not the most significant factor in California's unemployment. For one, I believe the California economy is a lot more diverse than Arizona's, which is heavily dependent on construction -- so even though California may have had a larger real estate bubble, it possibly represented a smaller percentage of the overall state economy.
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