The Mother Lode’s Low Unemployment Rate Ticks Up
Sacramento, CA – While California’s latest unemployment figures are tying a record low rate, joblessness in the Mother Lode grew a bit.
Across the state, newly released data indicates unemployment came in at 4.1 percent in July with employers adding 19,600 nonfarm payroll jobs.
In Calaveras County, the rate remains slightly below the state average. It had previously grown by a half-percent in May to come in at 3.8 percent in June. It ticked up another tenth of a point to 3.9 percent in July. Of the county’s 21,880 workforce members, 850 were reported without jobs last month.
In Tuolumne County, unemployment, which also notched up a half-percent from May to 4.4 percent in June, grew again in July to 4.6 percent. The current Tuolumne County workforce is 22,080 of which 1,010 are unemployed.
Imperial County continues to experience far and away, the highest rate of joblessness, currently reported at nearly 21 percent. Colusa and Tulare counties follow at rates unemployment rates in the 10 percent range. Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo counties come in with the lowest unemployment levels in the just over two percent range.
California Job Growth Now In 113th Month
The rate of state job growth in July ties that of the 1960s expansion as the longest on record. Employment Development Department (EDD) officials say California, the most populous state in the nation, needs between 8,000 and 9,000 new jobs each month to keep up with its growing workforce but, according to the latest numbers, has averaged for the past nine years to create 29,200 new jobs each month.
Officials add that the more than 3.2 million jobs California has added since 2010 account for more than 15 percent of the country’s job gains over that time.
Governor Gavin Newsom recently commented, “In every way, the American economy is substantially impacted by how California is doing. We continue to be optimistic, but not naive.”
His office points out analysts have been warning for a year that tariffs on Chinese imports could threaten national job growth. While that has not yet happened, the Trump administration recently intensified economic conflict with China by imposing ten percent tariffs on $300 billion in Chinese imports, raising fears it would respond with tariffs on U.S. exports.
