State’s Jobless Rate Continues to Fall; Hits 4.8% in October
After hitting a 30-year low in September, California’s unemployment rate dropped even further last month as the state’s vigorous economy sailed ahead.
Officials said Friday that nonfarm employers statewide added 26,000 net jobs in October, slightly smaller than previous months but still a healthy level. Joblessness dropped to 4.8% from 4.9% in September, when the rate dipped below 5% for the first time since December 1969.
Orange County’s labor market remained unusually taut, promising hard times for retailers seeking extra holiday help. The jobless rate, although not adjusted for seasonal variations, dipped to 2.5% in October from 2.7% the previous month.
For the first time, the county’s labor force--those who are working and seeking jobs--passed the 1.5 million mark last month. Even so, the ranks of jobless workers declined further, to just 37,500.
Hiring last month remained fairly brisk, although job growth in the county has clearly slowed from last year’s breakneck pace. As in the state, the county continues to lose aerospace manufacturing jobs; industry payrolls in the county declined by 200, bringing to about 1,000 the total aerospace cuts over the last year.
But the service industry has more than made up for the sluggish manufacturing sector. The county’s employment in trucking and warehousing and in the communications industry was up by 6% in October from a year earlier. And the county continues to see sharp payroll increases in business services, of which nearly one-quarter statewide are workers in high-paying software and Internet firms. Last month, business services employed 126,400 in the county, almost as much as state and local government employment combined.
Although analysts had wondered whether the generation-low jobless rate could last, Friday’s report removed such doubts and raised the prospect that California’s economy, like the nation’s, may be in for a sustained period of very low unemployment with minuscule inflation.
“There’s no reason to suspect that it won’t continue,” said Michael Bernick, director of the state’s Employment Development Department, which released Friday’s report.
But the tightening labor market does appear to be constraining California’s overall job growth. Through October, employers have added about 30,000 net jobs a month this year, compared to a monthly average of 40,000 in 1998, according to the employment agency’s official estimates.
Other state payroll reports suggest job growth this year has been stronger than those estimates. Even so, many do see the hiring pace slowing in the sizzling construction industry and in the finance and retail trades. And manufacturing remains weak, notably aerospace.
Aircraft and parts makers shed another 1,200 jobs last month. The industry has now eliminated about 13,000 jobs in California in the last year, reflecting layoffs at Boeing and Northrop Grumman and the continuing decline in California’s share of U.S. defense spending.
While aerospace cutbacks are likely to go on for a while, the good news is that in this strong economy, many of those displaced are finding new jobs fairly quickly.
Steve Dettwiler, 44, said Friday that it took him just about a month to find work after getting laid off from Boeing’s plant in Monrovia earlier this year.
“I wasn’t worried,” said Dettwiler, a mechanic who found a better-paying job at ACE Clearwater Enterprises, a metal welding and assembly firm in Torrance.
Indeed, Friday’s jobs report showed that 41% of the 805,000 Californians who were jobless in October had been unemployed for fewer than five weeks. By comparison, five years earlier, when 1.25 million Californians were out of work, 70% of them had been unemployed for more than five weeks.
The latest report also showed a continuing decline in minority unemployment. The jobless rate for Latinos fell to 7.3% in October--down from 8.4% a year ago and the lowest in at least a decade. Black unemployment was 8.7% last month, down from 11.2% in October 1998.
Last month, the sprawling services industry--from child-care providers to engineering firms--accounted for 16,000 of the 26,000 net new jobs. Hotels and amusement parks added more than 5,000 workers between them. But higher-paying services, including computer services and engineering and management firms, added a hearty batch of jobs as well.
According to other new state data, Internet firms in California have tripled their employment from March 1997 to March 1999, to 27,000. And their average annual wages have doubled in that time, to $95,000.
Regionally, the Riverside-San Bernardino area led all metro areas in California in job growth, followed by Orange and Ventura counties. Los Angeles County was in the middle, and high-cost San Francisco and San Jose, which took a harder blow from the Asian economic crisis, trailed.
Unemployment rates within California continued to vary widely. Joblessness in Los Angeles County, the only county where the unemployment rate is seasonally adjusted, declined to 5.8% in October from a revised 5.9% in September. Unemployment fell in the Riverside-San Bernardino area to 5% from 5.3%.
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Unemployment Trend
Orange County’s unemployment drops again.
October: 2.5%
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Source: Employment Development Dept. Researched by JANICE JONES DODDS/ Los Angeles Times
