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| USA states unemployment 2004 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
But the employment report released Friday has a less rosy side: The California Employment Development Department reported that only 8,500 net new payroll jobs were created statewide in September. The earlier U.S. Department of Labor posting could point to just 114,000 net new payroll jobs across the nation.
"It's been pretty tough," said Chad Clary, 25, a recent college graduate who moved to Santa Clarita from Alabama in search of an administrative position. "There are a lot more opportunities out here, but there are a lot more people here."
The market, he noted, is jammed with older people, who can't afford to retire.
That's the spot in which Elvia Morgan, 60, of Los Angeles finds herself. She lost her credit union job of 36 years and now competes with applicants less than half her age.
"There's age discrimination. Let's face it," she said at a Los Angeles City College job fair Thursday. "If I go in with more experience and a 20-something-year-old girl applies as well, they're going to get the girl."
Economists who track California said they weren't surprised by the disparity between the falling unemployment rate and the modest number of new jobs. What's important, they said, are longer-term trends, not month-to-month volatility.
"There's no question the trend is in the right direction," said Sun Won Sohn, who holds the Martin V. Smith professorship at Cal State Channel Islands. "The economy is moving, albeit not as fast as we'd like it to."
Employment gains, though small in the last month, have been broad-based over the last year, he said. According to the Employment Development Department, a net 262,000 jobs — a rise of 1.9% — were generated by employers in the Golden State over the last 12 months, with significant jumps in information, up 6%; construction, 4.7%; professional and business services, 4.1%; leisure and hospitality, 4.1%; and educational and health services, 3.1%.
The biggest drop over the last year was in government jobs, down 1.7%, while manufacturing fell almost 1%.
In the Los Angeles metropolitan area, September seasonally adjusted joblessness fell to 10.6% from a revised 11% in August.
In the Inland Empire of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, the unadjusted rate dropped to 11.6% from a revised 12.3% in August. And in Orange County, the unadjusted rate was 7.1% in September, compared with a revised 7.7% in August.
Despite the improvement, California's unemployment rate has remained stubbornly high compared with the rest of the nation. Only Nevada, at 11.8%, and Rhode Island, at 10.5%, were higher in September.
California still has far to go to get back the 3 million or so jobs that disappeared in the downturn that officially ended in June 2009 but whose effects are still being felt, warned Esmael Adibi, director of Chapman University's A. Gary AndersonCenter for Economic Research. ... Continue to read.
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