Jobless Rate for October Drops to 6.6%

Ventura County’s unemployment rate dipped to 6.6% in October, the lowest figure for the month since the pre-recession year of 1990, according to a report released Friday by the state’s Employment Development Department.

In October 1990, Ventura County had an unemployment rate of 6.4%, but the region has added 16,600 nonfarm jobs since then, said labor market analyst Dee Johnson.

“They represent solid growth in the economy in Ventura County, especially overall as we pull out of the recession,” she said.

The county’s unemployment rate slid half a percentage point from the 7.1% rate recorded in the same month last year and was down from 7.7% in September.

Ventura County’s gains mirrored those of California as a whole, which saw unemployment edge down to 6.3% last month as the state added almost 25,000 jobs.

Total wage and salary employment in the county reached 262,100 last month, an increase of 4,400 jobs over September.

With 3,000 new education jobs, schools accounted for all but 600 of the new nonfarm positions Ventura County added last month. The number of new nonagricultural jobs is considered a more accurate barometer of the region’s economic health than total employment. October’s increase came in the wake of the 1,100 new education-related jobs created the previous month.

Accentuating the routine seasonal increase in education jobs has been the ongoing statewide effort to reduce class sizes in kindergarten through third grade, Johnson said.

Typical of those efforts was the hiring of 40 new teachers by the 17,000-student Ventura County Unified School District, said Jerry Dannenberg, assistant superintendent for human resources.

“We’ve been actively recruiting, trying to get as many people in place as we can,” he said.

In the three years through 1998, the district plans to hire about 120 new teachers to reduce the student-teacher ratio per class from 30 to 1 to 20 to 1, Dannenberg said.

Also helping to fill the job rolls were 400 new construction jobs and 200 more in the manufacturing sector, positions that generally pay more than those in the retail industry. Last month’s pattern continued the 7.1% job growth in the construction industry and the 4.6% rise in manufacturing jobs the county has experienced from last year.

“It’s reassuring to look at the fact that the solid segments of the economy like manufacturing and construction . . . have all added a lot of jobs over the year,” Johnson said.

Nonfarm job growth in the last year stands at 2.1%, slightly below the 2.5% figure economists were expecting for 1997 as a whole.

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Ventura County Jobless Rate

October 1997: 6.6%

Annual Rates

1997: 6.6%

1996: 7.1%

1995: 7.5%

1994: 7.8%

Source: Calfiornia Employment Development Department