The Employment Development Department said Friday the statewide unemployment rate dropped two-tenths of a percentage point. However, non-farm payroll jobs, considered one of the key barometers of economic health, declined by 1,500 compared with December.
While L.A.’s jobless rate dipped to 5.8 percent in January, employers in the county shed almost 88,000 jobs from their payrolls, marking an especially dismal start to the year, according to state figures released Friday.
Blue Shield of California, one of the state’s biggest health plans, has eliminated up to 460 jobs, including about 300 in Sacramento and the Central Valley, more than 70 in Southern California, and close to 80 in its San Francisco headquarters office and other Bay Area outposts.
Unemployment rates in just 14 states had returned to or fallen below their 2007 averages in 2015: Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Vermont and Wisconsin.
Yet, demographics does not offer a full explanation. Anyone who works with job seekers throughout California today knows that workers in their mid-50s and over are retiring in part because of the difficulty more and more are encountering in finding employment. . . Further, demographics does not explain Thornberg’s third factor, the increased disability and other benefit rolls. As noted in these pages over the past few years, the disability rolls have skyrocketed in size since the early 2000s, especially Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). SSDI was at nearly 8.9 million workers on its rolls in December 2015, up from 6.5 million in 2005. And once on SSDI few exit for work.
The U.S. labor market slowed substantially in January but unemployment hit an eight-year low, sending mixed signals for Federal Reserve officials as they assess whether the economy is strong enough for another interest-rate increase.
The statement amounted to an acknowledgment the Fed could alter its plans for more rate increases this year if market turbulence and slowing global growth continue or worsen. But officials aren’t ready to commit to holding off on rate rises.
Since 2007, for instance, the San Francisco Bay Area, with 20 percent of the state’s population, has generated well over half of the state’s employment growth. Conversely, Los Angeles County, with a 25 percent of the population, has produced less than 10 percent of the new jobs.
The Employment Development Department said Friday the unemployment rate grew a tenth of a percentage point despite a gain of 60,400 nonfarm payroll jobs.
California has only ranked in the top 20 [net job growth rate] twice since 2006, and over that time it’s been in the bottom 20 three times. Indeed, California has been in the top ten only once since 2001. That was the data point they used in their analysis.
California is a single state, but many economies. The recovery of the entire state obscures the struggles of many regions and industries. Geographically, our economic divide has worsened. We have wealthy coastal enclaves and poor inland communities; a booming high technology sector and low-wage service businesses. Nearly a quarter of Californians still live in poverty.
Nonfarm payrolls increased a seasonally adjusted 292,000 in December, the Labor Department said Friday. The unemployment rate, obtained through a separate survey, held steady at 5% last month. The unemployment rate hasn’t been below that mark since 2007.
Many of the areas with double-digit unemployment rates are in inland California, a working-class region hit hard by the foreclosure crisis.
Buoyed by the roaring tech industry, unemployment in the Bay Area has dropped to pre-recession levels while parts of Southern California have bounced back more slowly.