State Jobless Rate at 4.6%, as Growth Persists
Despite California’s energy crunch and the emerging national slowdown, the state’s economy kept growing vigorously in December, adding a surprising 53,100 jobs and cutting the unemployment rate to 4.6%.
The decline in joblessness, down from 4.8% in November, brought the unemployment rate back to the lowest level in the state’s 7 1/2-year expansion and equaled a 30-year low for California. Unemployment also was 4.6% last February.
What’s more, all five Los Angeles-area counties except Ventura reported their best monthly unemployment rates since state officials started keeping local jobless statistics in their current form in the early 1980s. For African Americans, too, joblessness fell to a record low.
Friday’s employment report, though better than expected, squared with recent assessments by many leading business forecasters that the national downturn is only starting to touch California. Some economists said December could prove to be the last big hurrah before California’s energy troubles, along with reduced technology spending and other potential hazards, start translating into higher unemployment and slower job growth.
“2000 was a very good year for the California economy. There’s no two ways about that. But we’re going to see some moderation of growth in 2001. That’s also fairly clear,” said Ted Gibson, chief economist for the California Department of Finance.
In fact, even in the buoyant employment report for last month, there were a few signs of weakness. The most notable soft spot in December was manufacturing, which lost 2,200 jobs.
Analysts said that a big gain in construction employment stemmed largely from the unusually dry weather last month, and is likely to be washed out by January’s heavy rains. Likewise, the strong job increases in motion pictures mainly resulted from the rush to finish projects before the anticipated midyear strikes in Hollywood, which could bring severe economic repercussions later on.
Forecasters in recent weeks have said the state’s outlook for this year is clouded by high natural gas prices and California’s overburdened power grid, which brings the threat of rolling blackouts and soaring bills. In Southern California industries such as textiles, the energy squeeze already has prompted production cutbacks.
The Bay Area, meanwhile, faces a downturn in the same technology industries that created enormous wealth in recent years.
“You see a lot of warning signs out there,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. “Whenever you get a lot of conflicting signals like we’re seeing now, that’s often a turning point.”
All the same, December’s figures capped an extraordinary year in which California--which was hit far harder than the rest of the nation by the early 1990s recession--continued to catch up fast. The state, which accounts for 12% of the U.S. population, created 23% of the nation’s new jobs last year.
For Los Angeles County, December’s jobless rate was 5%, the lowest since at least January 1983. November’s rate also was initially reported as 5%, but state officials said Friday that they revised the figure up to 5.1%. A year ago, it was 5.7%.
Orange County, one of the powerhouses of the California economy, saw its unemployment fall to a record low, 2%, down from 2.3% in November. By one assessment, it could be the county’s lowest unemployment since World War II. “It is indicative of a very, very strong economy,” said Esmael Adibi, director of the Center for Economic Research at Chapman University.
In one of the clearest indications of where California stands versus the rest of the country, the state accounted for more than half of the 105,000 jobs created across the country last month.
Even more striking, California accounted for nearly nine out of every 10 private sector jobs created across the country in December. Still, as previously reported, the jobless rate for the nation was 4% in December, unchanged from the month before despite weak job growth.
Even Tech Firms ‘Still Growing’
Michael S. Bernick, director of the California Employment Development Department, said he sees no sign of the anticipated slowdown.
“We’re out there with employers and job seekers every day, and the number of job openings for people of all skill levels is high,” said Bernick, whose agency calculates the state’s unemployment figures and operates employment offices for job hunters.
Peter Margarita, vice president of West Coast operations for the Snelling Personnel Services agency, offered a similar assessment. He said job orders keep pouring into his Costa Mesa office, many from high-tech companies despite the recent setbacks among dot-com firms.
“In general, we still have more orders than we have people to fill those orders, especially in the technical area. Despite what you hear about the technology businesses, they’re still growing, they still need people,” he said.
Among African Americans, unemployment fell to 7.5% in December, the best in at least 18 years. In December, the figure was 7.6%. For Latinos, unemployment edged up to 6.5%, from a record low of 6.4% in the four previous months.
For whites, unemployment was 4.9%, unchanged from the month before, and up only slightly from the record low of 4.8% in April. In the “Asian and other” category, the level was 4.2%, down from 4.4% in November and narrowly above the record low of 4.1% in April.
Over the full year, the latest figures show that the state gained 443,100 jobs, an average of 36,925 a month. That’s the second-highest for the current expansion. Analysts say that when the major annual revision in the state’s employment statistics comes out next month, 2000 could prove to be the biggest year on record for job growth. The current record is 1984’s gain of 478,500.
The overall job growth in California, however, papers over some continuing problems. For instance, even as California’s urban areas added thousands of jobs, the state’s rural areas are enduring some of the worst unemployment in the country. In December in Colusa County, northwest of Sacramento, unemployment hit 23.5%. The next-worst was Imperial County, east of San Diego, where unemployment stood at 21.7%.
In addition, the state suffers more than other parts of the nation from an urban income gap between its wealthy elite and its lowest wage-earners, many of them immigrants. Critics say the state’s education and job-training systems will need to be overhauled for California to ever significantly lift the fortunes of its poorest residents.
In other Southern California counties, the jobless rates were as follows:
* Riverside County, 4.4% last month, down from 5.1% in November.
* San Bernardino County, 3.7% last month, down from 4.3% in November.
* San Diego, 2.3%, down from 2.7% in November.
* Ventura County, 4.1%, down from 4.7% in November. Ventura’s record low is 3.9%, which was last reached in March 1989.
The figures for California and Los Angeles County are seasonally adjusted, meaning that they are recalculated to filter out the impact of normal seasonal trends such as the heavy retail hiring in November and December. The figures for other areas in the state are not adjusted.
*
Times staff writer Leslie Earnest in Orange County contributed to this story.
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State Job Boom
Unemployment declined in December, again reaching its lowest level in 30 years. The same rate was reached in February 2000.
December: 4.6%
Source: California Employment Development Department
