Experts Predict Yearly Job Loss

Although Ventura County’s unemployment rate of 5.6% in October remained unchanged from the previous month, the number of local jobs likely to be lost this year could represent the largest annual decline in more than three decades.

October’s jobless rate in Ventura County was lower than the state rate of 6.4%, and less than the 5.8% recorded locally for the same period last year.

In year-to-year comparisons, 5,900 total jobs were lost in the county, with the greatest declines in professional and business services, down 2,600 jobs. Construction lost 1,700 positions and government lost 1,200 workers.

Mark Schniepp, director of the California Economic Forecast in Santa Barbara, said the labor statistics released by the state Employment Development Department last week confirm a disturbing trend: Each month, employers in Ventura County have fewer workers than they did during the corresponding month of 2002.

“Things haven’t improved much ... we’ve reached a point when we’re losing 6,300 nonfarm jobs” on an annualized basis, he said. “It’s basically been in this range the whole year and we’ve only got two months to go.”

With a strike and lockout affecting more than 3,000 unionized grocery workers in the county expected to show up in the November employment statistics, the situation isn’t likely to get better any time soon.

“If we continue to get the same reports for November and December, we’ll have lost at least 6,000 jobs in 2003, which will be the first down year since 1992,” Schniepp said.

The 3,758 nonfarm jobs lost 11 years ago set the record for year-to-year job losses based on local employment statistics dating back to 1969, he said.

The current downward slide is a departure from the healthy job growth of the past five years. In both 1999 and 2000, for example, more than 11,000 jobs were added to local industrial payrolls, Schniepp said, out of more than 37,000 jobs created in Ventura County since 1998.

But even during those boom times, experts warned that the pace of growth would not go on forever.

“Most everybody knows that was an unsustainable, wild period when we hired more people than we probably should have,” Schniepp said.

“A lot of people will say those jobs we’re losing are positions that probably shouldn’t have been created anyway. They were part of the Internet and high-tech bubble, that were based on flimsy models to begin with ... but does the correction need to be that large?” he asked, referring to the expected loss of 6,000 jobs this year.

Dan Hamilton, director of economics for the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast, said monthly job losses have become old news.

“What we’re going to be looking for now is when we will pull out of it,” Hamilton said, adding that the university’s current forecast predicts Ventura County will lose a total of 5,000, or 1.7%, of its jobs by year’s end.

Anticipating a recovery in 2004 -- based on the strength of the national economy and increased productivity -- Hamilton said the forecast calls for approximately 3,800 jobs to be created in Ventura County next year.

Bruce Stenslie, director of Ventura County’s Workforce Investment Board, said he was encouraged that the total civilian labor force -- those with jobs inside and outside Ventura County, plus residents seeking work -- grew by 4,400 between September and October.

“The last year has been bleak, but the trend is starting to move in the right direction,” he said. “I agree, though, that we have a long way to go.”

Stenslie, whose group promotes business investment and worker training, said more employers in such fields as health care and retail seem to be looking for workers.

Another bright spot, he said, was that 400 jobs were gained over the past 12 months in nondurable goods manufacturing, which includes well-paying biotech companies such as Amgen and Baxter Bioscience.

“While it’s fairly isolated and the numbers are not huge, it’s a healthy component of the economy with very high-paying jobs,” he said.

At 5.6% unemployment in October, Ventura County ranked 20th among the state’s 58 counties.

San Luis Obispo, with 3.1%, again placed first, while neighboring Santa Barbara County ranked fourth.

Imperial County, just east of San Diego County, again placed last with more than one in five people out of work.