June Unemployment Rises to 6.5%, but Outlook Strong

Unemployment in Ventura County rose markedly between May and June, with the area losing 500 nonfarm jobs throughout the private sector, according to state Employment Development Department statistics released Friday.

State officials listed the June unemployment rate in Ventura County at 6.5%, up significantly from the 5.9% reported last month.

But analysts said the county’s economy is still robust, with the number of local jobs well above that of the same period a year ago.

“It’s not a negative economic thing,” said Doug Perron, a labor market analyst with the EDD office in Santa Barbara.

“This is a seasonal pattern,” he said. “Overall, it’s looking quite good. Ventura County is up 1.2% in nonfarm job growth over the past year, so that’s healthy.”

May’s unemployment rate of 5.9% was the lowest in Ventura County since 1990.

What’s more, economists say, the county’s job market is stronger than that of the state as a whole, which reported a 7.1% unemployment rate for the month of June.

The region is showing dramatic increases over the year before, with employers reporting 2,800 more nonfarm jobs in the county than in June 1995.

Many of the job losses since May were the result of seasonal employment situations. For example, about 800 jobs were lost in education, and 200 more disappeared from the transportation industry, state analysts reported.

“From May to June, you’re going to have a drop-off in the employment sector, largely because educational payroll jobs are down,” Perron said.

“There’s also a bit of loss in the transportation and food-services sectors. It’s all crop-related,” he said. “Transportation, food processing--everything that revolves around crop processing.”

But other industries fared much better, showing strong increases over the previous month, the report concluded.

The service industry, for example, hired 500 new people, and 300 construction jobs were filled between May and June.

Agriculture in Ventura County suffered a sharp decline, dropping 2,500 workers after May. But the 18,200 jobs in the local farm industry that were reported Friday represent a 3.4% increase over the same period a year ago.

“I would expect there would always be a drop between May and June,” said Craig Underwood, whose family farms 1,100 acres of citrus, avocados and vegetables in Ventura County.

“The farm economy doesn’t run in step with the rest of the economy,” Underwood said. “There are a lot of seasonal factors and weather factors that affect it.”

Overall, the state EDD reported 261,300 jobs in Ventura County in June, down 1.1% from the previous month. But the county had a total of 3,400 more jobs than it had a year ago, an increase of 1.3%, the report said.

Nonfarm jobs climbed from 240,300 in June 1995 to 243,100 last month.

“The general economic trend is that we went through this recession and downturn, and now we’re in a growth mode,” Perron said. “But it’s not going to be the 1980s kind of recovery. It’s going to be slow.

“The job growth is not as significant as some would like, but it is significant,” he said. “The overall trend is for more jobs and lower unemployment.”