County Jobless Rate Increases to 8.5% : Unemployment: The June figure is the highest since August, 1985. The sharp rise stems in part from graduates entering the labor force.

Ventura County’s unemployment rate soared to 8.5% in June, its highest level in nearly seven years and a major jump over the 7% jobless rate for the same month last year.

June’s jobless rate was the county’s highest since August, 1985, when the rate was 8.9%, and the 33,000 people who were unemployed amounted to the highest number since the depths of the 1982 recession.

State labor officials said the sharp increase from a 7% jobless rate in May was caused partly by thousands of graduates entering the labor force in a year when few jobs are available.

The rise in joblessness was aggravated by an earlier-than-usual end to the county’s strawberry harvest, they said.

But labor officials also blamed the rising jobless rate on continuing weakness in the California economy. The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate reached 9.5% in June, well above the 7.8% national rate.

In Ventura, 6,500 more people entered the job market in June, bringing the county’s civilian labor force to 387,200, according to a report released Friday by the state Employment Development Department.

But the new job seekers found little to be encouraged about, as the number of jobs in the county declined by 900, with most of the losses coming in agriculture, food processing and food transport.

The picture during the last 12 months was even grimmer. Since June of last year, 7,800 jobs have disappeared in Ventura County, including 3,500 jobs in manufacturing and 1,300 in construction, according to the report.

In June, 1991, the unemployment rate in Ventura County stood at 7%. So far this year, the rate each month has exceeded last year’s jobless rate.

Linda Reed, a state labor analyst, said several seasonal trends combined this year to boost unemployment in June. College and high school graduates, as well as other students looking for summer employment, entered the job market just as the strawberry and celery seasons were ending earlier than usual, Reed said.

And more youths are looking for work this summer, said Larry Kennedy, who manages the state employment center in Simi Valley. “The recession has started to impact families,” Kennedy said. “With one or both parents threatened with unemployment, their children are more interested in working.”

At the same time, Kennedy said, the labor market has been slow to improve as manufacturers worry about the effect heavy consumer debt continues to have on demand. “Employers are not ready yet to retool and rehire,” Kennedy said.

With manufacturing jobs in decline, the jobs that are available are mostly lower-paying, said Annette Sparks, the manager of the state unemployment center in Ventura.

“The good-paying jobs are few and far between,” Sparks said. “Our lobby is more crowded, and the people who are coming in are angry. It’s very scary being out of work.”

Sparks said many of the jobless are becoming desperate as they near the end of the 26-week extension to their unemployment benefits passed by Congress.

Robert Luis Perez, a 31-year-old mechanic from Oxnard, is one of those who is increasingly concerned as time runs out on his jobless benefits. He has not worked since he was laid off last year by struggling Alpac Foods of Oxnard.

Sitting in the lobby of the Ventura unemployment center, Perez said he is losing hope of finding a job that pays $10 an hour like his last one did. “There’s a lot of low wages out there. Employers don’t want to pay that much,” he said. “If you hear of an opening now, you go and there’s 200 people in line. A lot of people are out of work.”

Perez said the year he has been out of work is the longest he has gone without a job, and he has begun to pay an emotional toll. “Being out of work this long makes me feel bad,” he said. “At this point, I’ll be a janitor or whatever else is out there.”