O.C. Jobless Rate Dropped in July; So Did Number of Jobs

Orange County’s unemployment rate dropped to 6.1% for July from the nine-year high of 6.7% in June. But that good news, released Friday, was tempered by a big drop in the number of jobs provided by employers in the county.

The dip in the jobless rate came as state labor analysts added 10,200 people to their estimates of Orange County residents with jobs and dropped 8,000 from the roll of those without jobs.

Economists say the monthly labor-force estimates are not a good indicator of the state of the job market because they are based on very small samplings and are prone to wild swings.

“There can be tremendous error . . . and these numbers may in fact overstate the job growth,” said Lynn Reaser, chief economist for First Interstate Bank in Los Angeles.

Esmael Adibi, director of the Chapman University Center for Economic Research, added, “I have a little bit of doubt about these numbers. They are saying we gained 12,000 jobs, but they are not wage and salary jobs. . . . Still, I hope they are correct, because that means that a lot of the people who are losing wage and salary jobs are starting their own businesses.”

A better indicator of the local economy’s health, economists say, is the wage and salary employment tally based on reports by Orange County businesses of the full- and part-time positions on their payrolls.

That report showed that the number of jobs in Orange County dropped by 13,900 from June. That reduced the number of local jobs to 1.124 million--a 1.2% month-to-month decline and off 2.8% from the July, 1991, level of 1.157 million.

Seasonal furloughs of teachers and other school employees accounted for 13,500 of last month’s job losses. Those jobs are recaptured each fall as a new school year begins.

Part of the education job losses were made up by a gain of 1,500 jobs in city government employment--mainly summer hires by park and recreation programs across the county, said Eleanor Jordan, Orange County labor market analyst for the state Employment Development Department.

On the permanent side of the ledger, the county’s shrinking manufacturing sector lost 1,600 jobs during the month, leaving a total of 224,400 positions for a net loss since July 1991 of 11,800 jobs.

The retail trades trimmed 1,300 positions from their payrolls in July as uneasy consumers continued holding off on spending. Retailing, which had been one of the fastest growing employment sectors in the county for most of the past two decades, has lost 8,000 jobs since July 1991.

“That’s probably a more accurate look at things,” Reaser said. “My sense in Southern California, especially in Los Angeles and Orange counties, is that the economy still is not recovering and that, while the worst of the decline may be behind us, there is still no rebound on the way.”

Other employment categories generally remained unchanged.

Orange County’s July numbers followed a statewide trend of big increases in the official count of employed workers and big drops in the jobless rates for most major urban counties.

The exceptions were Los Angeles County, where the previously released July unemployment rate jumped to 11.2% from June’s 9.8%; and Riverside County, which jumped to 14% from 13%. The statewide jobless rate dropped to 9.3% from June’s 9.5%.

“Things are in the doldrums,” said Anil Puri, dean of the economics department at Cal State Fullerton. “It appears that things have come down as much as they are likely to, but they’re not starting to go up yet, either.”