Jobless Rate Grows, but County Is ‘Holding Up’ : Unemployment: Statistic increases from 6.5% to 7.3%, but experts are not pessimistic.

After falling steadily for several months, Ventura County’s unemployment rate climbed from 6.5% in May to 7.3% in June, according to a report released Monday by the state Employment Development Department.

Despite the increase, economists and unemployment officials said they are encouraged by signs that the county’s economy is at least holding even.

“This report shows no tremendous losses, but no victories either,” said Mark Schniepp, director of the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecasting Project. “It’s stagnant. But we should probably be happy with the report in that the county is holding up as well as it is.”

As recently as June of last year, Ventura County’s unemployment rate had soared to 8.9%. But by May of this year, the unemployment rate reached its lowest point in three years.

The construction industry, which had dropped into virtual dormancy during the worst part of the recession, showed growth of 400 jobs from May to June, thanks in large part to the need to repair and remodel buildings damaged by the Jan. 17 earthquake.

“There were people in construction who hadn’t worked in two years before the earthquake,” said Larry Kennedy, manager of the unemployment office in Simi Valley, which serves the entire east county. “Now we have a lot of reconstruction going on within the school districts and the big businesses that took the hits from the quake.”

Many residents whose homes required minor repairs are also remodeling, Kennedy said. He said he expects the flurry of post-quake construction in the east county to last at least six more months.

Schniepp said residential building permits were up 39% during the first five months of the year compared to the same period last year. He said he was not surprised to see the jump in unemployment from May to June, saying much of it could be attributed to the loss of 3,200 agricultural jobs since May.

“A lot of the May employment is in strawberry harvesting and processing,” he said. “So you tend to get a decline in agricultural jobs when the strawberry season ends.”

Kennedy said he does not put much stock in the jobless statistic. He measures the health of the job market by the activity in his Simi Valley office.

“One of the indirect signals to me of how well we’re doing are the numbers of unsolicited job orders we get here,” he said. “Last week 65 employers called in with jobs.”

He said he has about 250 jobs to fill right now.

“Two years ago, I would have had half that,” Kennedy added.

The number of unemployment claims in the east county went down from May to June, he said, despite the increase in unemployment. In May 1,660 people applied for unemployment; in June 1,636 made claims.

“That’s a lot of people, but it’s not as much as it has been,” Kennedy said. “I definitely see a bottom to the recession.”

But Schniepp was more cautious, saying the continuing loss of jobs in key growth areas such as the manufacturing sector--down 1,100 jobs since June 1993--indicates the county’s economic future is still tenuous.

“This whole report tends to suggest that Ventura is not really going anywhere right now in terms of labor gain,” he said. “Of course, that is just indicative of the rest of Southern California. Ventura is not the lonely child here. It is simply part of the team.”