‘91 State Job Loss Was 6 Times That Estimated : Employment: Recession ravaged Southland far more than the government estimated earlier, figures show. Orange County lost 45,600 positions, rather than 11,300.

California last year suffered an extraordinary decline of 333,000 jobs--six times as many as previously reported--according to new statistics that show the recession has ravaged Southern California far more than the government estimated earlier.

Nearly two-thirds of the total job losses were in Los Angeles County. Statewide, losses in aerospace, high-tech, heavy manufacturing and construction led the grim list, according to the California Employment Development Department.

“We expected a substantial revision in the numbers, but these losses just take your breath away,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the private Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles County. “Recession and restructuring of the economy have been a devastating combination. These numbers validate the pain that the consumer has been feeling.”

Of the state jobs that vanished in 1991, Los Angeles County accounted for 208,400 and Orange County for 45,600. Previously, figures showed a loss of only 39,800 jobs in Los Angeles County and 11,300 in Orange County.

The new findings come at a time when the U.S. Labor Department has been criticized for understating the toll of the slump, especially in California, New York and some other large industrial states. A report last year by the California Department of Finance alleged that job losses in the state had been underestimated by more than 350,000 in early 1991.

The new findings, which are part of an annual nationwide revision of employment statistics by the Labor Department, do not go that far, but nonetheless paint a much darker picture of the California economy than before.

“I think we hit it right on,” said Ted Gibson, principal economist with the Finance Department and author of that agency’s earlier critical job-loss report. “We certainly were closer to correct than the official (data) series was.”

In part, the discrepancy in figures arose from an undercount of bankruptcies and business that failed as the result of the freeze in the winter of 1990-91, officials said. Some critics maintain that the government did not adequately assess the recession’s damaging impact on small business and new companies.

“The report only confirms what I think most people believed was true--that California’s economy was hit very hard by defense cuts, by the general economic recession and by the negative business climate in 1991, and the Los Angeles area was hit particularly hard,” said Lynn Reaser, chief economist at First Interstate Bancorp. in Los Angeles.

The pattern of job losses extended far beyond Southern California, the new data shows. In the San Francisco metropolitan area, 21,800 jobs were lost. Before the revision, the figures showed an increase of 3,200 jobs.

The new figures show that Los Angeles County lost 208,400 jobs, dropping 4.7% to a monthly average of 4.04 million jobs in 1991 from 4.24 million in 1990.

Statewide, the new figures showed that 333,000 jobs were lost in 1991, a 2.6% decrease to 12.5 million jobs in 1991 from 12.83 million in 1990. The old figures showed a decrease of only 50,000 jobs, or a drop of 0.4%; the revision represents more than a sixfold increase.

The discrepancy in job losses does not bear directly on the state’s unemployment rate--8.7% in February--which is based on a separate survey of households. However, many economists maintain that the trend in payroll job total provides a truer picture of the economy’s direction. According to the new statistics, Los Angeles County lost 66,400 manufacturing jobs in 1991, including 25,700 in aerospace and high tech. Another 40,400 jobs disappeared in retail trade, 36,100 in services and 23,600 in construction.

One of the major surprises in the new statistics was pervasive weakness in areas outside of defense and aerospace, Kyser said.

“We had a job losses in the service sector, and that was sort of surprising,” he said. “Also, job losses in retail trade were a little larger than originally announced.”

Spencer Fields, a research manager with the Employment Development Department in Sacramento, said one of the sources of discrepancy between the old figures and the gloomier new ones was an initial understatement of businesses filing for bankruptcy.

Under the law, businesses “have lots of options on how to report that they’re going out of business, and they don’t even have to report it,” he said. “If they do, we may not even get it until May or June. So we totally missed that.”

The survey also missed about two-thirds of the job losses suffered by non-agricultural employers who were harmed by the winter freeze of 1990-1991. “The big surprise was that it happened all in one month, between December, 1990, and January, 1991,” he said.

Still, the revision confirmed the original finding that Los Angeles County is bearing a disproportionate share of the state’s jobless burden. The revised figures show that Los Angeles County accounted for 62.6% of total state job losses, compared with about 30% in a typical year.

“Construction is still showing the biggest decline, but manufacturing is still down substantially, and the decline is also . . . in transportation, trade and financial services,” Reaser added. “As of February, even the service sector is still showing that jobs are down from a year ago, despite some continued growth in health care.”

As for the outlook, “It looks, as of February, relative to a year ago, that all of the major sectors are still showing a reduction in jobs, with the exception of government,” she said.

Times staff writers Sonni Efron and Dan Weikel in Orange County contributed to this story.