6,900 Local Jobs Lost in December

It’s official: 2003 will go down in the Ventura County record books as having the worst job losses in recent memory, with about 6,900 jobs lost last month.

But the county did get a bit of good news last month, as the jobless rate continued to decline.

In a report released Friday by the state Employment Development Department, the county’s December jobless rate was estimated at 5.3%, down from 5.8% 12 months earlier and an improvement over a revised 5.7% rate in November.

That compares with a 6.1% state unemployment rate and 5.4% for the country in December.

On an annualized basis, when the complete losses for each month are averaged together, the county’s total job reduction was 5,440.

And when only nonfarm jobs are counted, the annualized loss grew to about 5,800 positions.

By either number, the number of jobs that vanished is the largest in more than three decades and the duration of local downsizing -- 15 consecutive months of year-over-year losses -- is the longest period in at least 20 years.

Mark Schniepp, director of the California Economic Forecast in Santa Barbara, said most of Ventura County’s job losses last year were concentrated in four sectors: construction, durable goods manufacturing, professional and business services, and local education.

That’s the bad news. However, hope may be on the horizon.

Experts who monitor the local economy believe Ventura County employers will again begin creating jobs in 2004.

And at least one major aerospace employer with local operations said Friday that it planned to create about 200 well-paying jobs at Naval Base Ventura County.

“We do expect things to turn around in 2004, but it is very possible that the next couple of months could be as bad as they had been in 2003,” said Dan Hamilton, director of economics for UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast.

This week, Dan Montgomery, a vice president of Northrop Grumman’s Missile Defense Division, which has 350 employees in Ventura County, said a $4.5-billion federal contract it won last month would eventually mean creation of 500 jobs in California, with 200 of them at Naval Base Ventura County.

Hiring in large numbers won’t start until about 2007.

Montgomery said annual salaries would range from $50,000 to $150,000.