Unemployment Drops by 0.1%; Building Surges

Surges in construction and service industries overrode continued bad times for oil and gas producers last month and helped edge the nation’s overall unemployment rate for April down 0.1% to 7%, the Labor Department reported Friday.

California’s jobless rate dipped a notch, to 6.8% of the civilian labor force last month, down from 6.9% in March, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said. April was the fifth successive month in which the state’s unemployment rate has bettered the national figure. This reverses a traditional pattern under which California, long a magnet for job seekers, has experienced unemployment exceeding the national rate.

California’s current economy is bolstered by strength in several business sectors, notably defense industry, construction and building supplies and food processing, said Thomas Plewes, associate commissioner of labor statistics.

Construction Activity Climbs

The construction industry, stimulated by declining interest rates and good weather across the nation, picked up 85,000 jobs to reach a total April employment figure just under 5 million jobs, a 503,000-job jump over 1985. And--attributed primarily to the construction spurt--was a 45,000-job increase in finance, insurance and real estate employment.

There was another 85,000-job rise during April in service industry employment, which totaled 74.9 million after seasonal adjustment, an increase of 2.8 million over a year earlier.

On the minus side, jobs in oil and gas extraction fell by 35,000 in April, marking the oil industry’s third straight month of decline, the bureau reported. Confronted by sliding world oil prices, producers cut back on exploration and drilling and have let go an eighth of their workers since February. The bureau said that total employment in the industry has plunged to 522,000 from 603,000 at the end of last year.

Another continuing problem area noted in the study was factory employment, which fell 25,000 during April to a seasonally adjusted total of 13.1 million jobs. Since January, 1985, the study said, 240,000 factory workers have been displaced, with 85,000 of the total in the first four months of 1986.

8.3 Million Out of Work

While total April employment stood at 110.6 million, up 106,000 from March, the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics survey said 8.3 million Americans were out of work. However, the number of people unable to find work was down 77,000 from March and 42,000 below the previous year.

Janet L. Norwood, commissioner of labor statistics, appearing Friday before Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, said that manufacturing has regained less than 60% of the jobs lost during the 1981-82 recession and said that employment in six of 21 industries surveyed is below November, 1982, levels. Producers blame import competition for the job losses.

Extends Recovery Period

Norwood noted that the national employment increase, while modest, marks the 41st month of economic recovery from the 1981-82 recession. “The remarkable thing about this recovery is that it has held up so long,” she said.

Even though the drop in oil prices has hit home in some major oil-producing states, notably Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, Norwood said, “there are many forecasters who believe the drop in oil prices will stimulate the economy generally.”

California is a major oil producer but has a larger and much more diversified economy than the other oil states, and experts believe it will suffer less than the others from the plunge in oil prices.

As it has in the past, the survey found unemployment to be unequally distributed among population groups. The overall 7% unemployment rate includes both civilian workers and those in the military services.

Jobless Blacks Increase

The jobless rate for all civilian workers was put at 7.1% in April, down from 7.2% in March, and the April jobless rate for all whites was 6.1%--down from 6.2% in March. However, the rate for all black workers was 14.8% in April, up from 14.7% in March.

The rate for Latinos was 10.4% in April and 10.3% in March. The report said that black teen-age unemployment in April stood at 42.6%--down from 43.7% in March. The April rate for Latino teen-agers was 10.4%, as against 10.3% in March.