County’s December Jobless Rate Drops : Unemployment: The decline to 7.6% is attributed more to people leaving the area or giving up on hiring prospects, not on any economic rise.

Ventura County’s jobless rate dropped to 7.6% last month, down from 8.3% in November and 8.7% in December, 1992.

But economists attributed the decline more to residents leaving the county or giving up on the job market than to any significant improvement in the local economy.

Although the jobless rate fell last month, the county actually lost 200 non-farm jobs between November and December, according to a report issued Friday by the state Employment Development Department.

The preliminary estimate of Ventura County’s unemployment rate for all of 1993 is 8.6%, state analysts say. A revised final estimate will be available in late February.

For December, the statewide unemployment rate was 8.3%, down a full point from the year before, the report stated. The U. S. unemployment rate for December, 1993, was 6%, a decrease from the 7% of December, 1992, according to the report.

But in Ventura County, unemployment could be going back up in the wake of this month’s earthquake.

Jobless benefit claims have shot up at the Simi Valley unemployment office since the Jan. 17 quake. Officials at the Ventura unemployment office reported only a slight rise in benefit claims after the temblor. But Pat Baldoni, a job service supervisor in the Simi Valley office, estimated that about 2,000 residents have filed new benefit claims in the nine working days since the quake.

Even with the poor economy of recent years, the Simi Valley office usually processes about 2,000 claims and 500 claim extensions in an entire month, Baldoni said. She said she expects that number to double or triple in January.

“These are not people who are used to filing unemployment at all,” she said, referring to workers who have found their workplace condemned due to quake damage. “They are so stunned and dazed when they come in.”

Typical of such claimants is Robin Vecchio, 27, of Simi Valley. A former saleswoman for Saks Fifth Avenue, she learned Wednesday that the Woodland Hills store where she worked for years received severe damage and will not reopen.

On Friday, Vecchio filled out a claim form at the Simi Valley unemployment office. “I’ve always had jobs,” said the mother of two toddlers. “The word unemployment never crossed my mind. But then it was like, how am I going to feed my children?”

Not only has Vecchio lost her job, but her husband, a department manager at Bullock’s in Sherman Oaks’ Fashion Square, might also lose his. He is still waiting to hear whether his store will reopen.

What’s more, she said with a wavering smile, her parents live in Northridge, two miles from the quake’s epicenter. While Vecchio and her husband try to put their lives back together, they are also helping her parents get their home in order.

“I feel really scared,” she said. “We haven’t been getting a lot of sleep.”

Even before the quake, Ventura County’s economy was in bad shape. Only 900 county residents found non-farm work between November and December, about the same as the previous month.

The pool of manufacturing jobs--among the highest-paying jobs in the county--decreased by 300 over the month.

The retail sector added 500 jobs between November and December, but many of those were temporary holiday jobs. And the increase was smaller than in most holiday seasons, economists said.

“It doesn’t look like much is improving at all,” said Mark Schniepp, director of an economic forecasting group at UC Santa Barbara. “People are leaving the area or . . . becoming self-employed. But self-employed could mean they are making pots or something in their garage.”

Mike Goehring, from his seat on the economic front lines, would agree wholeheartedly. It has been nearly nine months since Goehring, 41, received his layoff notice from a Newbury Park aerospace company, and so far he has had no decent job offer.

“I’ll tell you, the economy may be getting better in a lot of other states, but not in California,” Goehring said.

A resident of Simi Valley, Goehring checks the job ads for production planners such as himself anywhere in the greater Los Angeles area. “It’s amazing how they’ve downgraded the salary for what I do,” he said indignantly, asserting that salaries are down 25% to 30% from what he made less than a year ago.

Still, he would settle for even that. In fact, he said, he’s considering applying for a temporary job with a company in San Dimas, just to bring in some money. “You know where the 210 freeway is?” he asks. “Well, it’s at the other end of it. But hey, I’ll take it.”

Adding insult to injury, his girlfriend, Julie Smith, 44, joined him at the unemployment office Friday after the same Newbury Park firm laid her off from a quality control job in the latest round of furloughs.

“She was very well thought of there, and she’d been with them nine years,” he said after Smith had gone into a meeting for first-time claim-filers. “But it doesn’t matter who you are. Years of service--well, they just don’t seem to count anymore.”