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.
Even worse, the state Employment Development Department reported in its annual data revision that there were 42,000 fewer jobs showing up on employer payrolls in December than it originally estimated.
The unemployment rate drop from the revised December figure of 6 percent would usually be greeted as good news, but the rate fell for the wrong reason: there were 18,000 fewer people in the labor force in January. More county residents reported they either gave up looking for work or returned to school. What’s more, the labor force of 4.97 million was smaller this January than last January.
View Article