November Unemployment Rate Falls to 6.6%

Ventura County’s jobless rate slumped to 6.6% in November, the lowest figure for the month in eight years, state analysts said Friday.

The last time the county’s November unemployment rate slid to such a level was the pre-recession year of 1989, said Dee Johnson, the county’s labor market analyst with the Employment Development Department.

“Ventura County continues to steadily grow in most all sectors of the economy,” she said. “And it shows good year-to-year growth in goods-producing industries, in construction and in manufacturing.”

Jobs in the relatively high-paying goods-producing industries category have grown a brisk 3.2% in the past year, with construction adding 300 jobs and manufacturing 1,400. Also, more than 800 real estate jobs have been added in the past year, a number that UC Santa Barbara economist Mark Schniepp attributed to a hot housing market.

“The tone of the report is actually pretty good because of its diversification,” he said. “All the eggs of Ventura County are not being put in one basket in terms of employment growth. It’s a very diverse and broad-based growth in labor market sectors, which is very healthy for the economy.”

November’s preliminary unemployment rate was below October’s revised figure of 6.9% and the 7.5% recorded in the county in November 1996. The state’s seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate last month was 5.7%.

Ventura County’s employment rolls hit 359,800 in November, an increase of 2,300 over the same period last year.

The only sectors where employment has dropped markedly in the past year is in state government and agriculture.

State government employment posted a stunning 45% drop, which Johnson attributed largely to the closure of Camarillo State Hospital.

But 1,500 agricultural jobs have been lost in the past year as well, Schniepp said.

“We’ve been seeing that general attrition of agricultural jobs in Ventura County over the past couple of years,” he said, noting farm employment peaked locally in the spring of 1996. “There seems to be more efficiency going on in agriculture and less people are needed.”

The rate of nonfarm job creation slowed to 1.4% last month over November 1996, a figure dismissed as an “aberration” by Schniepp.

“There’s a slowing in the labor markets,” he conceded, noting that the county has seen job growth of as much as 3% to 4% in the past two to three years.

“Only two out of 11 months to date [in 1997] has employment growth fallen below a 2% annual rate. . . . It’s when you put two or three months of this together you have to be concerned.”

Estimated county nonfarm employment remained stable in November with job rolls remaining at 248,300, exactly the same figure as October.

A loss of an estimated 600 local teaching positions--a figure Johnson attributes to fewer substitute teachers being hired--was offset by gains in other areas, including 400 more manufacturing jobs.

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Ventura County Jobless Rate

November, 1997: 6.6%

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Annual Rates:

1997: 6.6%

1996: 7.1%

1995: 7.5--

1994: 7.8%

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Source: California Employment Development Department