State Posts Slim Gain in Jobs in July

California employers added a mere 900 net jobs in July, down from a revised 18,600 in June, as a slowing national economy and continuing employment declines among single-family home builders took their toll, state officials reported Friday.

July’s job gain for California was the state’s worst performance since a drop of 4,800 jobs in April. The state’s job picture would have been worse were it not for the busy commercial construction sector as well as tourism.

“We don’t have enough people to do the work that’s lined up for us,” said Mark Benjamin, president of Santa Monica-based Morley Builders, which has almost twice as many people on jobs now than a year ago.

Even as the emerging housing slump and resultant drop-off in home construction damps employment growth, commercial builders such as Benjamin say they are swamped with projects, including parking garages and fancy hotels. They are straining to find carpenters, ironworkers and other tradespeople.

Overall, the construction sector, which includes residential building, shed 2,100 jobs in July. That’s up from an average monthly loss this year of 1,843.

Commercial builders attribute the net decline in construction employment to layoffs in home building that involve workers who have not moved on to commercial projects because they lack the skills, are discouraged by longer commutes or are otherwise uninterested.

The state’s hotels, theme parks and related businesses are going strong this summer as high gasoline prices prompt Californians to vacation closer to home. That contributed to the creation of 2,600 jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector in July, for a total of 1.5 million.

The gains helped drive the state’s unemployment rate to 4.8%, down from 4.9% in June and the same as the national figure. California’s jobless rate dropped to 4.8% twice this year, in January and March. The last time the rate was lower was in February 2001, when it dropped to 4.7%.

Still, the declining housing market took its toll, also contributing to weakness in the financial services sector as mortgage bankers trimmed jobs, said Howard Roth, chief economist for the state Finance Department.

“There were a pretty small number of jobs created and certainly less than our share of what was considered to be a disappointing national number,” Roth said. The nation added 113,000 positions last month, down from 124,000 in June.

Commercial construction is one of the bright spots in the state’s economic engine, Roth said. Although the value of single-family home construction permits dropped 24% in June compared with a year earlier, he said, almost every other part of the building business saw big increases.

The value of permits for multifamily home projects was up 34% in June from a year earlier. The value of hotel and motel permits was up 61%. Office permits were up 80%. And the value of permits for parking garages was 300% higher in June than a year earlier.

The increases are dramatic because they come on the heels of minimal activity, Roth said.

“They were way overbuilt for a long time and went down to almost nothing before they started to rebound,” he said. “Vacancy rates have come down quite a bit. It got to the point where developers thought, ‘OK, we could probably sell or rent some office space now.’ ”

Pasadena-based Pankow Builders, which is building the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills and a parking garage attached to the Eastern Columbia condominium tower in downtown Los Angeles, has expanded its employment by about a third over the last 18 months.

“We’re pretty much booked for this year,” said Dave Eichten, vice president for Pankow’s Southern California operation.

Morley Builders is similarly booked, with jobs that include the recently completed Getty Villa renovation in Malibu and a parking garage addition at the Westfield Shoppingtown Topanga in Canoga Park.

Over the last 12 months, Morley has employed about 700 laborers and tradespeople, up from about 400 during the previous year, said Benjamin, the firm’s president.

“We were running a lot of jobs with overtime, and we were burning people out,” he said.

The shortage of skilled construction workers and engineers is a nationwide problem, Benjamin said.

The problem, he said, is that the workforce is thinning as aging baby boomers drop out of physically demanding construction jobs.

Commercial construction jobs, which are more heavily unionized than home building, pay as much as $45 an hour for experienced tradespeople and are among the last places where high school graduates can get health benefits and a traditional pension, he said.