State Chalks Up Big Gain in Jobs

California employers woke up from their hiring hibernation and added a net 20,400 nonfarm jobs in November, the state reported Friday, a solid increase that suggests that employment growth here has gotten back on track after a nationwide post-hurricane slump.

The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.2%, the Employment Development Department said.

The latest gain reversed two months of dismal job creation and is the latest evidence of how California’s economic fortunes have been tied to the national economy in recent months.

Employers across the country put hiring plans on hold in September and October after hurricanes Katrina and Rita disrupted Gulf Coast energy production, leading to record gasoline and natural gas prices.

But hiring picked up nationwide in November as U.S. employers added a net 215,000 jobs -- on par with pre-storm employment growth.

“We’re back to more normal job growth. It was a solid report,” Howard Roth, chief economist for the state Department of Finance, said of the latest California data.

“Employers here in California could have been just as concerned about rising energy costs as employers elsewhere and may have held off in hiring” the previous two months, Roth said.

Job creation might even rise sharply in December as employers are encouraged by recent declines in gasoline prices and expectations of decent holiday spending, said Steve Cochrane, regional economist at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pa.

The question facing the Golden State’s economy is how much momentum it can sustain in the new year.

Many analysts expect growth to slow into 2006 as the stimulus of surging housing prices wears off, prompting homeowners to rein in spending. Rising interest rates and continued high energy costs also could damp the expansion.

“This looks like as good as it gets for a while,” said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto. The degree to which job growth tails off next year “depends on how much the housing sector contracts,” he said.

Levy and other analysts aren’t sure whether other industry sectors can pick up the slack if, as expected, construction activity slows next year amid reduced demand for new homes. The construction sector -- by far the state’s leading job creator -- accounted for about a third of California’s employment growth in the last year, Levy noted.

“It’s hard to see how construction won’t be a minus next year,” he said.

Economists at the widely watched UCLA Anderson Forecast are predicting that jobs in California will grow 1.1% next year, down from 1.6% this year.

Nationally, jobs will grow 1.2% next year, also off from 1.6% this year, the UCLA group predicts.

November’s California job gain was on par with the 20,800 average monthly gain from January to July. It came after a revised net increase of 7,600 jobs in October and a loss of 16,600 in September, the Employment Development Department reported.

Job growth was spread broadly across many industries last month.

Nine of the 11 industry categories tracked by the department added jobs, led by construction with a net boost of 8,000.

Trade, transportation and utilities added 7,900 positions, and professional and business services gained 7,200. The information category added 6,100, led by a rebound of 5,300 jobs in Hollywood movie production.

Government posted the largest decline, dropping 12,200 positions. But that finding is suspect because it was based on an unusually small sample of employers and will probably be revised next month, economist Roth said. The only other category to fall, educational and health services, lost 100 positions.

The state’s 5.2% unemployment rate was close to the national rate of 5% and down from 6% a year earlier. The number of unemployed people in the state rose by 3,000 to 939,000. Total California nonfarm payroll employment was 14,842,800.

Orange County continued to enjoy the Southland’s lowest jobless rate, at 3.7%, down from a revised 3.8% in October. San Diego County came in at 4.2%, followed by Ventura and San Bernardino counties at 4.9%. Riverside County posted a 5.1% rate. Those figures were not seasonally adjusted.

Los Angeles County’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate surged to 5.1% from 4.5% in October, in part because of a jump of 21,000 in the total workforce, presumably as more job seekers reentered the market amid improving prospects.

The county’s jobless rate had fallen sharply in the last year, from 6.5% in November 2004.