California’s Economy Has Been Pinched by Unemployment

[andhra_jp]

The state’s 5.1 percent unemployment rate in December was a percentage point higher than a year earlier, and well above the national rate of 3.7 percent. The only state faring worse than California was Nevada, at 5.3 percent, according to recently revised figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

(The national rate rose to 3.9 percent in February; state-by-state figures for January and February aren’t available yet.)

California’s unemployment rate is usually above the U.S. average because of its young and fast-growing work force, but in the early part of the pandemic recovery, the gap was smaller — 4 percent in California in May 2022, compared with 3.6 percent in the nation.

Since then, a wave of deep cuts has hit workers at several big tech companies, and entertainment-related employers have only slowly begun to rebound from the Hollywood strikes last year. The unemployment rate in Los Angeles County is around 5 percent.

In more rural stretches of the state, including Imperial County along the Mexican border, where agriculture is a key economic engine, the unemployment rate is in double digits — roughly 18 percent, up 3.1 percentage points from a year earlier.

Nearly 25,000 workers in Los Angeles lost their jobs in Hollywood during the strikes, according to a report in December by the Otis College of Art and Design.
 

[ismartganesh]

highest layoffs since 2009 anta