State’s Jobless Rate Edges Up in April

California’s unemployment rate edged up to 4.8% in April, marking the first time in six years that joblessness statewide climbed two consecutive months and providing strong evidence of a cooling economy. In March, unemployment in California was 4.7%.

Figures released Friday by state officials also showed rising unemployment in Los Angeles County, with the jobless level climbing to 5.1% in April from a revised 4.9% the month before.

All told, the new employment statistics underscore how the U.S. slump, combined with the state’s energy and high-tech troubles, have begun to dampen business expansion in much of California.

The state economy, after booming in 2000 and continuing to expand briskly at the beginning of this year, “is now on a slower growth path,” said Brad Williams, senior economist for the California legislative analyst’s office.

Analysts emphasized that the comedown for California is far less severe than the national slowdown. Still, they said a sharp drop in technology spending has led to an abrupt end to the boom in Silicon Valley and other parts of the Bay Area.

Taking together all five Los Angeles-area counties and San Diego, the jobless rate was 4.1% in April, unchanged from March, but down from 4.4% in April 2000. By contrast, the nine-county Bay Area posted a jobless rate of 2.8% last month, up from 2.6% in March and from 2.4% in April 2000.

Analysts expect the state economy to cool further later this year, as a result of everything from rolling power blackouts to high gasoline prices to the downward pull of slowdowns nationally and overseas.

Williams said layoffs at major technology-manufacturing companies and slower growth in computer services fields are especially troubling because they had been the source of so many high-paying new jobs in recent years. The technology boom “propelled a lot of growth in the state, and that’s reversing. Just as it had a magnifying effect on the way up, it will have a magnifying effect on the way down,” Williams said.

He predicted that sales of homes, cars and other consumer goods will taper off substantially, particularly in Northern California, and said that the state’s unemployment is likely to rise to 5.5% to 6% by year’s end.

There was some reassuring news in Friday’s employment report. The state gained 17,300 jobs in April. That was barely one-third of the monthly average last year, but still impressive in a month when the nation lost 223,000 jobs.

“So far, we’re dodging the worst of the national weakness,” said Ted Gibson, chief economist for the California Department of Finance.

The biggest job gains were in the services, government, retailing and construction categories. The declines mainly came in manufacturing.

Michael S. Bernick, director of the California Employment Development Department, said the state’s job-placement offices “are not seeing the frenetic pace that we saw in much of 2000, but our people still are reporting a regular flow of job openings.”

Analysts said the state’s rising unemployment rate stems more from an influx of new job hunters to the labor market than from layoffs. They said California’s continuing economic momentum, at a time other regions are hurting, means that the state might be drawing more job hunters from other states and countries.

California business forecasters, both inside and outside government, continue to predict that the state will avoid falling into a recession. Although there is no official definition of a recession for the state, most analysts consider it a sustained period of declining employment. Leading California business forecasters continue to foresee moderate job growth of close to 2.5% this year, versus the rapid 3.8% gains in 2000.

The jobless rates for California and Los Angeles County remain fairly close to historic lows. The state unemployment level of 4.5% in February was its best since 1969.

Likewise, Los Angeles County’s rate of 4.7% for the same month also was a 32-year low. In addition, the most recent jobless rates for both the state and county remain better than the levels of a year ago.

Despite small rises in unemployment in Los Angeles and Orange counties last month, forecasters generally are upbeat about Southern California’s prospects this year. The region’s service industries continue to add jobs, the construction fields show momentum and manufacturing, while declining, is doing far better locally than nationally or in the Bay Area.

Forecasters also were relieved by the recent tentative labor settlement between Hollywood studios and the Writers Guild of America. They say that pact raised the likelihood that the local entertainment industry will avoid strikes this year that could have damaged the economy.

As a result, most analysts say the five-county region--Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties--should account for most of the state’s job growth this year. San Diego County also is expected to keep growing.

“Even if the nation goes into a recession--and I don’t think we will--we’ll fare pretty well,” said Joseph P. Magaddino, director of the Office of Economic Research at Cal State Long Beach. “Goodness knows we deserve it, after going through the wretched period of the early 1990s,” Magaddino said, citing the region’s devastating recession a decade ago that stemmed from defense industry cutbacks and slumps in real estate and finance.

Among the state’s 58 counties, the lowest unemployment rates were in Sonoma, at 2.3%, followed by Orange and San Luis Obispo counties, at 2.5%.

Orange County’s unemployment rate was up from 2.4% in March but, at the same time, it continued adding jobs. The service sector showed a particularly strong gain, partly due to the recent expansion of the Disney resort in Anaheim.

For blacks and Latinos, unemployment rates changed only slightly and remained near record lows. The jobless rate for Latinos inched down to 6.6%, from 6.7% in March, while joblessness among blacks edged up to 7.4% in April, from 7.3% the month before.

California’s rural areas and small cities continue to suffer some of the worst unemployment in the nation, and the national slowdown could depress those areas further. The highest unemployment rate among the counties occurred in Imperial, at 19.8%, followed by Tulare, at 15.3%, and Merced and Colusa, both at 15.1%.

Nationally, as previously reported, the unemployment rate rose to 4.5% in April, up from 4.3%. The gap between joblessness in California and nationally is now the narrowest it has been since September 1990, when the state was sinking into recession.

In the other Southland counties, jobless rates declined in April. Riverside County’s rate was 4.5%, down from 4.6% in March; San Bernardino’s level was 4.4%, down from 4.5%; and Ventura’s was 3.3%, down from 3.6%. San Diego, however, saw its jobless rate inch up to 2.7%, from 2.6%.

The last time California’s unemployment rate rose two consecutive months was in early 1995, when it climbed from a March level of 7.8% to a May level of 8%.

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Times staff writer Leslie Earnest contributed to this report.

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Jobless Rates

Unemployment rates in California and Los Angeles County. All figures are adjusted for seasonal trends.

Los Angeles County

April: 5.1%

California: 4.8%

Source: California Employment Development Department