Jobless Rate for County Hits 7.5% in January : Economy: Farming and construction are hardest hit. But officials say the recession has affected every industry.

A growing number of employees in financial services, real estate and the aerospace industry have joined the swelling ranks of jobless people in Ventura County, where the unemployment rate rose to 7.5% in January, state officials said Tuesday.

As the recession took even firmer hold in February, unemployment claims rose 40% from the same month a year ago, with 6,002 people filing for benefits at the county’s three unemployment offices, according to the state Employment Development Department.

“I’m afraid to get a decent apartment and then not be able to make rent again,” said Rudy Alarcon, 46, a welder who has been living in his car while taking temporary jobs pulling weeds, driving a forklift and working in a mail room. “I’ve got a skill, and here I’m stuffing envelopes, but I guess it’s better than nothing. Pride doesn’t put beans on the table.”

Managers of the state employment development offices in Simi Valley and north and south Oxnard said the economic malaise has hit every industry to some degree, though construction and farming continue to be the hardest hit.

Pat Baldoni, the department’s Simi Valley employer services supervisor, said fewer than 100 companies a month are listing job openings with her office, a 50% drop from March, 1990.

“We have more people coming in, and fewer jobs we can place them in,” Baldoni said. “That’s got to be scary for these applicants.”

On Tuesday, scores of Latino farm workers sought work with a Nebraska meatpacking company that was interviewing in the south Oxnard EDD office for butchers and meat cutters. The farm workers’ employment opportunities have dwindled since the December freeze caused about $130-million damage to crops in the county.

The company was offering permanent jobs paying from $5.80 to $6.50 an hour with health and vacation benefits, along with a free bus ticket to Nebraska and relocation housing for five days. Carlos Macias, 30, of Oxnard was hoping that three years experience as a butcher in Texas might earn him one of the positions.

“For the past eight months, I’ve been working a day or two a week in the fields,” Macias said through a translator. “I just don’t have steady work here.”

Katie Wojcik, 29, of Ventura was applying for unemployment benefits at the south Oxnard office. She had worked as a video and still photographer at Point Mugu Naval Air Station for eight years before quitting last year because the job provided no retirement benefits. She went to work as a secretary and receptionist for a Ventura computer software firm that closed its office in January after merging with a Massachusetts company, she said.

“I’ve been going after whatever’s out there and available, without having to work a job at half my old pay,” Wojcik said. “There’s a lot of jobs for $5 or $5.50 an hour, but people can’t live on that.”

Of the county’s 370,000-member labor force, about 28,000 people were jobless in January--in part because of layoffs in retail businesses after the holiday shopping season. The jobless rate was up 0.6% from December, and far higher than the 5.1% unemployment rate of January, 1990.

Unemployment claims in February fell 14% from the 6,978 filed in January, but the decline was not significant because the month had three fewer days, state officials said. County unemployment offices released the claims figures on Tuesday. The most recent unemployment rate available was for January.

Annette Sparks, manager of the south Oxnard EDD office, which also handles claims for many Port Hueneme and Camarillo residents, said many financial services and savings and loan employees are finding themselves out of work without warning, as their industries suffer from faded consumer confidence in the economy.

Baldoni said aerospace giant Northrop Corp. began laying off workers in February, as previously announced, at its Newbury Park plant.

Many farm workers who were unemployed during January because of the freeze returned to work in February with the arrival of the strawberry harvest.