O.C. Jobless Rate Lowest Since WWII

By EDMUND SANDERS and STUART SILVERSTEIN

Jan. 15, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

Driven by a rapidly expanding technology sector and robust construction market, Orange County employers added a hefty 40,000 jobs last year, pushing 1999 unemployment down to the lowest annual rate since the end of World War II.

In a government report Friday, officials said Orange County’s jobless rate in December sank to a record low 2.1% from a revised 2.4% in November.

For all of 1999, joblessness in Orange County averaged 2.7%, down from 2.9% in 1998.

“Who would have thought this kind of rate was feasible?” said Esmael Adibi, director of Anderson Center for Economic Research at Chapman University. “Obviously, this is indicative of a very strong economy.”

Aggressive hiring by the county’s technology companies was one of the driving forces behind the falling jobless rate.

Although officials didn’t break out high-tech hiring, the sector that includes software makers, Web designers and other technology firms was one of the county’s fastest growing. Jobs at those businesses surged 7.5% last year, based on December data. That was more than twice the growth rate for nonfarm jobs overall.

Irvine-based Broadcom Corp., for example, has more than doubled its work force over the past year, from 411 to nearly 900, a spokeswoman said Friday. And in an indication of just how tight the job market has become, one of Broadcom’s recent hires--a bike enthusiast who had five competing job offers--was offered a state-of-the-art mountain bike.

Overall, Orange County ended the year with 1.47 million people employed, officials at the Employment Development Department said. By that government survey, only 31,900 Orange County residents were unemployed last month.

For all of last year, Orange County employers increased their payrolls by about 40,000, down from 60,000 that were added in 1998. Still, job additions last year were considered robust.

Statewide, the figures told a similar--if less spectacular--story. The booming California economy created 63,700 jobs in December, the biggest monthly increase in nearly two years.

Employment growth was widespread, covering nearly every sector of the state’s economy. The broad-based job increases, continuing a long-running rebound that began in 1993 “shows just how robust California’s economy remains,” said Ross DeVol, director of regional studies for the Milken Institute in Santa Monica.

California’s unemployment rate stayed at 4.9% for a fourth consecutive month, the lowest level in the 30 years that the state has tracked joblessness in its current format. (November’s jobless rate was revised to 4.9%, up from a previously reported 4.8%.)

Economists said that growing employment opportunities have drawn more people into the job market, including those who once were too discouraged about their prospects to look for work.

December capped a strong year that brought the state 401,800 new jobs. Although that rise was smaller than the 446,300 increase in 1998, many analysts said the state economy gained steam in the second half of last year.

Friday’s report “is another confirmation of a really spectacular fourth quarter for California,” said Brad Williams, senior economist in the California Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Based on the surging income-tax revenues that flowed into the state’s treasury late in the year, Williams said he believes the preliminary employment figures released Friday actually understate the amount of job growth.

One of the few downbeat notes was that the state’s jobless rate of 4.9% remained above the national mark of 4.1%. Still, California is adding jobs faster than the rest of the country. The state’s non-farm job growth was 2.9% last year, versus a national gain of 2.1%.

For Southern California, which began its recovery later than the Bay Area, Friday’s report was particularly encouraging. The southern half of the state is leading the way in job growth, with unemployment in most counties falling to record lows or, at least, the lowest levels in decades.

In San Diego County, for example, the jobless level last month was 2.5%, the lowest in more than 40 years, and off from 2.8% in November and 3.0% in December 1998.

Even Los Angeles County, which took some of the hardest hits in California during the recession of the early 1990s, is bouncing back. In December, the county’s jobless rate dipped to 5.7%, the lowest mark since July 1990. In November, the county’s rate was 5.8% and in December 1998, the level was 6.8%.

While job growth has slowed in the Bay Area, that may be largely because so few workers are available to hire. San Francisco’s jobless rate last month was 2.3%, extra-ordinarily low for a major urban area. Nearby Marin and San Mateo counties shared the lowest jobless rates in the state, 1.4%.

What’s more, the Bay Area has been a source of many high-paying jobs in high technology, making its showing particularly impressive.

“Silicon Valley may be running out of room, and running into cost constraints, but it’s still the center of the universe for anything related to the Internet,” said Tom Lieser, executive director of the UCLA Anderson Business Forecast.

In December, eight of the nine major industry groups showed employment increases. The only job loser was the small mining industry, whose employment fell by a mere 200 jobs.

The construction industry, for example, kept booming in December. Its job total is up 8.9% over the past 12 months, the highest of the nine major employment categories.

The strength of the business is clear to people such as Tom Newbro, director for the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Training Trust apprenticeship program serving Los Angeles and Orange counties. Among the 200 apprentice mechanics in the program, Newbro said, “unemployment is maybe 1%, here in the middle of the winter. We’re in a really great economic time,” with many of the apprentices working overtime hours.

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Holding Steady

California’s jobless rate remained at 4.9% in December. A look at the job markets statewide and by county:

December unemployment rates in Southern California counties:

By County

County* Dec. ’99

jobless rate

Los Angeles

Orange

Riverside

San Bernardino

San Diego