WORKPLACE : Unemployment Employees See Glimmer of Hope
OK, so unemployment hit an eight-year high in Orange County in February at 5.6%, and, sure, even more recently the number of people coming in to file for unemployment is way up.
But over at the Employment Development Department office in Santa Ana--the county’s largest--state workers have noticed in the last week or so that the lines to file for unemployment benefits are getting shorter.
Occasionally there is even an empty space or two out in the expansive parking lot off south Grand Avenue.
“It looks much less busy,” says Mary E. Nelson, manager of the office. “The figures don’t show any great change yet, but I think it may be getting better.”
(Across the nation, applications for unemployment benefits dropped to a five-month low early this month, the federal Department of Labor reported Friday.)
Whether this trend lasts is anyone’s guess, but in the meantime Nelson and her harried staff are keeping their fingers crossed.
This is the unemployment office, after all, where 6,650 people filed for unemployment last month. And through the first 10 days of April, it looked like this month might be even worse: Two thousand people filed for unemployment, compared to 1,200 in the first 10 days of March.
But now, a week later, things seem to be looking up, at least if you consider the admittedly unscientific impressions of the people who work in the unemployment office.
That’s about the only good economic news for the county these days. A few weeks ago the state said it had underestimated the number of jobs that local companies lost last year by nearly 50,000, and said another 33,000 were lost in the first two months of this year.
Across the county, nearly 77,000 people were out of work at the end of February. That month’s 5.6% unemployment rate--the highest since 1984--was up from 4.8% in February, 1991.
And local economists don’t expect things to improve here until at least summer. So the glimmer of hope from the unemployment office in the last week could turn out to be a fluke.
