Jobless Rate Rises as 6,400 Posts Are Lost
Ventura County lost 6,400 nonfarm jobs in the 12 months ending in March -- the largest drop since the summer of 1992 -- while the unemployment rate increased slightly to 4.9%.
The industrial sector lost 3,800 jobs in February after falling 400 positions in January, all in year-to-year comparisons.
“I’m beginning to get a little worried about job loss.... I’m watching with concern,” said Dan Hamilton, director of economics for the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast. “The first quarter is definitely down a bit in total industrial jobs.”
Still, the March employment statistics, released last week by the state Employment Development Department, indicate Ventura County is better off than the state, which had a March jobless rate of 6.8%, and the nation with 6.2%.
Based on an average of this year’s first three months compared with the first three months of 2002, Hamilton said there are 4,234 fewer nonfarm jobs for a first-quarter average of 293,433, a 1.4% decline.
Categories of particular concern, he said, are manufacturing, with 1,433 fewer jobs in the first quarter of 2003; construction, down an average of 1,833; and professional and business services, with a loss of 1,333 positions, of which 733 were well-paying scientific and technical jobs.
Particularly worrisome was the loss of 1,300 jobs in durable goods manufacturing, because such companies have a positive effect on other local employers, he said. He used the example of an automaker, which would need to purchase steel, rubber, glass and other materials to create its product.
And “other services” employment -- a catch-all category including maintenance and repair workers, mechanics, barbers, gardeners, baby-sitters and ministers -- was down 1,400. The state statistics are based on an international jobs classification system that the U.S. began using this year.
Hamilton suggests it’s too early to start panicking about the local economy. He said he wants to learn whether the job-loss trend will be reversed during the normal spring hiring season.
“I think we’ll have a strong indication with May and June data,” he said. “It depends on how negative [the numbers] are.”
Mark Schniepp, director of California Economic Forecast, concurs that it’s a mistake to discount the viability of the Ventura County economy.
“We’ve had a general manufacturing sector weakness, but it really hasn’t weakened all that much,” Schniepp said. “It’s still relatively strong compared with adjacent counties and the rest of the state in terms of maintaining its work force.”
He blames softness in the construction industry on a lack of residential and commercial projects underway, countywide growth curbs and difficulties of developers in securing building approvals. But upcoming projects, including the massive RiverPark project in Oxnard and Village at the Park in Camarillo, will cause contractors to ramp up their payrolls again, he said.
“This report shows there is relative stability in the local jobs picture outside the pockets of weakness,” Schniepp said, adding the low unemployment rate “is further validation of the strength of the labor markets.”
For the first time this year, Ventura County joined the state’s top 10 counties in terms of lowest unemployment rate, tying with Placer County near Lake Tahoe for the No. 10 spot. San Luis Obispo County, at 3.4%, had the lowest jobless rate of California’s 58 counties. Santa Barbara County, at 4.5%, is in sixth place for the third consecutive month.
El Rio, northeast of Oxnard, had an estimated March jobless rate of 9.6%, meaning it continues to have the most severe unemployment of the dozen Ventura County communities measured by the state. Again, Ojai had the lowest percentage of its residents unemployed, with a rate of 2.6%.
