November Unemployment Up Slightly

Demonstrating the area’s continued strong economy, Ventura County’s unemployment rate rose slightly last month, but it was still lower than at the same time last year.

The jobless rate was 4.7% in November, compared with 4.4% the month before and 4.9% a year ago. There were 287,400 jobs in the county in November, up 6,300 over November 1999.

“Unemployment bounces around a little bit, but Ventura County is a dynamic place that is creating an awful lot of jobs,” said Bill Watkins, executive director of the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project.

Total employment is up 2.2% compared with last year.

A monthly report released Friday by the state’s Employment Development Department said the 1,300 jobs lost between October and November are primarily a result of decreases in farm employment. That category lost 2,800 jobs, while nonfarm industries added 1,500 jobs last month. Farming jobs are up 5.1% this year, compared with last year.

Mark Schniepp, director of the Center for Regional Economic Research in Santa Barbara, said the tight labor market is good for workers wanting to change jobs, but companies looking to hire may be feeling the squeeze.

There was a 2.1% increase during the 12-month period ending in November in nonfarm jobs in the county, which Schniepp said is a drop from the 4% increases the county was seeing earlier in the year. “We are still creating jobs and we have the momentum, but we are cooling down,” he said. “The reason is not necessarily that there are fewer jobs available, but there is no one around to fill them.”

He said the statistics should be particularly interesting to those who build housing, especially affordable housing, in the county. “I guess we need them to hurry up and build more homes in Fillmore,” he said.

The report said the number of jobs in trucking and warehousing is up 10% for the 12 months ended in November, while jobs in the apparel and other textile industries rose by 12.5%, from 800 to 900. For the month of November, the biggest gainer was the food products sector, which was up 9.1%.

In the state and local government sector, which saw a job rise of 2.8% for the year, most new jobs were in education and city government. Schniepp said those jobs most likely consisted of teachers needed because of bulging school enrollments, and additional administrators.

Schniepp joked that some niche industries might not be reflected in the labor statistics.

“There are exceptions to these numbers,” he said. “Right now I bet there is a huge demand for people who know a lot about voting machines. But once the voting machine is figured out, they might be unemployed again. It’s episodal.”