California employers continued a nearly four-year hiring streak by adding 54,200 jobs in May, one of the largest monthly employment jumps in the last year.
The state’s unemployment rate edged up to 6.4%, slightly higher than 6.3% in April, but significantly down from a rate of 7.6% a year earlier, according to data released Friday. Economists saw the small uptick in unemployment as encouraging, however, because more people entered the state’s labor force last month than at any time in the last quarter of a century — a sign of renewed confidence in the job market.
The construction industry continued to be state’s fastest-growing job creator, expanding at more than twice the rate of California’s overall job growth. Although there are still far fewer Californians working in construction than at the peak of the housing bubble in 2006, the industry is rebounding swiftly.
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