State Jobless Rate 10.1% --Worst Level in 9 Years : Economy: Jump is in sharp contrast to national unemployment, which at 7.2% is lowest since April.
California’s unemployment rate jumped to 10.1% in November, the highest level in more than nine years, as the state continues to be battered by job losses in the defense and electronics industries, the U.S. Labor Department reported Friday.
The increase contrasts sharply with a national dip in the jobless rate from 7.4% to 7.2% in November. The national rate is the lowest since April, apparently reflecting the country’s slow but continuing climb from recession.
California’s problems, however, are worsening. The state “is still hemorrhaging in the defense industries, and there is a lot of weakness in high-tech and computers,” said Thomas Plewes, associate commissioner of labor statistics.
The state’s November jobless rate rose from 9.8% in October, reaching a level not seen since June, 1983, when unemployment was 10.3% and the country was recovering from the worst slump since the Great Depression.
The contrast between the nation and the state is stark: The number of Americans at work has risen 1.3 million since November, 1991, while employment in California dropped by 139,000 over the year, according to the Labor Department.
In Los Angeles County, joblessness fell to 9.4% in November from 9.5% in October, marking the fourth consecutive monthly decline since the rate hit a recession high of 11.2% in July. But the improvement in the county’s highly volatile jobless rate stemmed solely from a shrinking labor force, as many discouraged workers apparently quit looking for jobs and were no longer counted among the unemployed.
The number of people at work in Los Angeles County actually declined in November by 32,000 to 4.1 million. There were 426,000 unemployed job seekers, down 7,000 from the prior month.
“There’s nothing to indicate that the local economy is going to make a big turnaround in the near future,” said Jay D. Horowitz, labor market analyst for the California Employment Development Department. Los Angeles County has suffered a loss of 99,000 jobs in the past 12 months.
The increases in California’s unemployment numbers “show why it is so important to keep monitoring the situation to see if the economy really is capable of mounting a sustained recovery,” said Gene Sperling, a top economic adviser for President-elect Bill Clinton’s economic team. “Unemployment is up in several of the big states,” he said, noting figures from Illinois and New Jersey. “The picture is still unclear.”
Nationally, a business recovery is under way but is dramatically different from the typical economic upturn--it is taking place without significant job growth. When other recessions have ended, all the lost jobs have been recovered and the economy has gone on to enjoy record job gains. This time, however, the economy has recouped only 15% of the jobs lost in the recession.
The recently announced surge in the gross domestic product--the nation’s output of goods and services--took place without the addition of large numbers of new jobs. Companies are managing to increase their output and their sales without a significant expansion of their payrolls.
In this new era of management austerity and caution, businesses use overtime, rather than hiring, to meet increased demand for products. The average work week for factory workers matched a 26-year high reached in May. It was 41.3 hours last month, up from 41.1 hours.
“The job market has not yet started to show the kind of improvement normally associated with an economic recovery,” said Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.), chairman of Congress’ Joint Economic Committee.
“If the economy were recovering as it has in the past, employment gains would average 300,000 per month,” Sarbanes said, as the committee was considering the government’s November jobs report. “In this tepid recovery, we have not had a single month of payroll gains that large. We have a growing population, an expanding labor force, and unemployment remains far too high.”
Even the Christmas shopping surge, which looks as if it will provide the biggest year-over-year sales boost since 1989, apparently will not have a robust impact on jobs. “Hiring in department stores and other retail establishments for the upcoming holiday period fell short of the normal seasonal pattern,” William G. Barron Jr., deputy commissioner of labor statistics, told the committee hearing.
Statistics indicated that 118 million Americans were working in November. The government’s survey of business payrolls, considered more accurate than the general household survey of unemployment, showed a very modest increase of 105,000 jobs. However, 45,000 of the total were poll watchers and officials working on Election Day. “That’s a real one-shot affair,” said Sarbanes.
The total number of Americans without jobs was 9.2 million last month. The figure was 141,000 lower than in October but still a hefty 2.4 million higher than in July, 1990, when the recession began. The payroll survey in California showed 12.2 million persons working, a decline of 16,800 for the month. Seven of the eight major employment groups suffered losses. Only government employment rose. The number of people without jobs was 1.5 million in November, up 53,000 from the month before.
Of the California numbers, Ted Gibson, economist with the California Department of Finance, said: “There’s nothing positive at all. We clearly are not participating in the national upturn.”
Rosenblatt reported from Washington and Silverstein from Los Angeles. Times staff writer David Lauter in Washington also contributed to this story.
