Joblessness in California at record low
California’s unemployment rate dropped to a record low of 4.5% in October, the state said Friday, reflecting what experts say is one of the tightest job markets in years.
The jobless rate was down from 4.8% in September and the lowest since the government started tracking it in 1976, the state Employment Development Department said.
The California job picture mirrors a tightening of the labor market nationwide -- reflecting a solid economy in the fifth year of an expansion. The healthcare needs of an aging population, along with a continuing boom in tourism, are helping to fuel the state’s employment growth.
The improving job market in California extends across a wide range of industry sectors and occupational categories, from low-skilled workers to professionals, experts said.
“Everybody is complaining that they can’t find good skilled workers, and I’ve never seen so many help-wanted signs every place you go,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.
One Monrovia retailer, who asked not to be named, has filled jobs by word of mouth for decades but said she resorted to placing her first online ad last month. Another employer looking for general help belied exasperation in a recent newspaper classified ad that summed up the labor market:
“I’M GOING CRAZY!!!! More work than staff. No experience necessary.”
Not surprisingly, job seekers are getting picky.
“They are asking for higher salaries, and they are less flexible in their commutes,” said Joan Van Donge, a vice president in Los Angeles for staffing firm Spherion Corp. “Two years ago we could get someone to drive from one side of L.A. to the other, to come in from the Inland Empire to Los Angeles. Now they are not as apt to do that.”
Economists expect the unemployment rate to stay below 5% for some time, repeating the pattern of the late 1990s, when the tech boom led to labor shortages in high-skilled, computer-related jobs. This time, tightness is developing in such sectors as healthcare, skilled manufacturing and trucking, recruiters and economists said.
Outside the slowing housing market, things aren’t so bad, they said. “If there weren’t a housing slowdown now, you’d have a labor shortage,” said John Husing, a Redlands-based economic development advisor.
The decline in construction jobs -- down 4,000 in October from a year earlier -- has been more than offset by growth in the state’s service sector, including tourism, education and healthcare.
“They are all growing for different reasons, but they are all growing,” said Keitaro Matsuda, senior economist for Union Bank of California. “They are propelling the California economy forward now.”
The state added 9,300 jobs in October, according to figures collected from employer payrolls, the Employment Development Department said Friday. That’s down from a revised gain of 17,900 a month earlier and the average monthly gain of 13,800 this year through September.
But a separate survey of households, upon which the unemployment rate was based, showed the state gaining 92,000 jobs in October.
The household survey can be more volatile. But because it picks up self-employment and other informal work arrangements that the payroll survey does not, Matsuda said, it may present a better picture of what’s going on in California.
He said the type of informal work arrangements the household survey captured were believed to be common in big cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco and a growing part of the broader economy as well.
No matter which gauge is used, “we’re getting some pretty good job growth,” said Howard Roth, chief economist for the state Department of Finance.
For the first time since 2000, he said, California is on track to end the year with an average jobless rate below 5%. That mirrors the U.S. unemployment rate, which was 4.4% in October, down from 4.6% in September and from 4.9% a year earlier.
Chuck Williams, dean of the University of the Pacific’s Eberhardt School of Business, said there were reasons to believe the job growth would continue.
“Lower energy prices may provide a boost for the economy heading into the final two months of the year,” he said.
The number of people out of work in October was 794,000, down 64,000 compared with the previous month and off 130,000 from October 2005, the state said.
The number of people receiving unemployment insurance benefits rose slightly to 302,233 in October from 296,597 the previous month.
