Although California’s official unemployment rate climbed out of the cellar during the year that ended June 30, it still had the nation’s second highest rate of total “labor underutilization,” according to a new federal government report.
The state’s unemployment rate shot up to well over 12 percent during the Great Recession and was at or near the highest in the nation for several years. It’s since dropped markedly and averaged 6.8 percent during the 2014-15 period, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says.
Despite the improvement, California’s rate was still lower than those of just five other states and tied with South Carolina. But the widely quoted jobless rate – the percentage of the civilian labor force that’s unemployed – is just one of six ways the BLS measures labor data.
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