18,500 jobs added in California
California employers added a net 18,500 jobs in March, the state reported Friday, a solid gain that analysts said was further evidence of the state economy’s resilience in the face of a housing slump.
It was the 10th month in the last 11 that California added jobs, according to the state Employment Development Department. The biggest gains came in the robust leisure and hospitality industry. But even the construction sector created jobs, buoyed by a boom in commercial and government projects, including hotels, parking garages and schools.
The unemployment rate held steady in March at a relatively low 4.8% for the fourth month in a row, another sign of the economy’s stability.
“It’s pretty good,” said Howard Roth, chief economist at the state Department of Finance. “We are pretty consistently now hitting 4.8%, which is a low number. And 18,500 is a fine number” of new jobs.
As long as the job market remains stable, analysts said, the housing slump will be contained and will not cause a recession like that of the early 1990s, when massive job losses in Southern California’s important aerospace industry forced many homeowners to sell.
Although the state and national economies have slowed from last year, “fortunately, the slow growth is accompanied by low and stable unemployment,” said Chuck Williams, dean of the University of the Pacific’s Eberhardt School of Business.
“California will likely be in this economic dry season for a couple more quarters,” he said. “But the spark of a recession thrown off by the cooling of the housing market is unlikely to trigger an economic wildfire in the state.”
There was some concern about the job market’s strength when the state shed 10,400 jobs in January, the first decline in several months.
But employment bounced back in February with a revised gain of 23,600 jobs. The March gain, though smaller than the previous month’s, was big enough to hold the unemployment rate steady even as labor force participation -- the number of people working and looking for work -- edged up 0.2%.
“That means people are coming into the labor force,” said state economist Roth. “They must have found jobs because the unemployment rate didn’t go up. That’s a good sign.”
Job growth continued to be concentrated in the Bay Area, which is still recovering from the deep recession triggered by the bust of the dot-com bubble, said Christopher Thornberg, an economist at Beacon Economics in Los Angeles. Southern California, except for the Inland Empire, showed substantial signs of slowing, he said.
“Overall growth in the state remained slow this month, and the quarterly annualized rate was slightly over 1.1%,” Thornberg said. “Gains in most of the state’s labor market were offset by losses in manufacturing and financial services.”
Manufacturing, which has been on a long and steady employment decline since the late 1980s, shed 4,000 jobs in March, a bit more than usual and almost half the loss of 8,100 jobs from the four sectors posting declines. State analysts said the losses came mostly in computer and electronic products and in apparel manufacturing.
The contraction in financial activities reflected the woes in the sub-prime mortgage sector, which has its epicenter in Orange County. Other categories showing declines were natural resources and mining, and other services.
Seven job categories expanded in March, adding a total of 26,600 jobs, including 6,300 in the leisure and hospitality industry. The construction industry added 3,800 jobs. That brought the year-over-year gains for construction to 9,200 jobs, a strong sign that the housing slump is curbing employment growth but not stopping it, analysts said.
Other categories adding jobs were trade, transportation and utilities; information; professional and business services; educational and health services; and government.
The monthly payroll survey also reported that the state had a total of 15.2 million jobs in March. A separate survey of households found 17.3 million jobs, an increase of 64,000 over the previous month.
The household survey is considered less reliable than the payroll survey but also more likely to pick up informal employment arrangements.
The number of people unemployed in California was 876,000, an increase of 2,000 from February and 3,000 more than in March of last year.
Of the unemployed, 366,900 were laid off and 92,300 left jobs on their own. The remaining were people looking for their first jobs, people reentering the job market and people who completed temporary assignments.
The Employment Development Department also reported that there were 352,742 people receiving regular unemployment insurance benefits during the March survey week. By comparison, 400,354 people were receiving such benefits in February, and 378,630 people were on unemployment in March 2006.
Also in March, 40,514 people made new claims for unemployment benefits, up from 39,496 in February and 37,573 a year earlier.
Orange County continued to win honors for the Southland’s lowest jobless rate, at 3.4%, followed by San Diego County at 4%, Ventura County at 4.2% and San Bernardino County at 4.7%. Los Angeles County came in at 4.9%, with Riverside County posting 5.1%. All those rates are not seasonally adjusted.
