California Jobless Rate Virtually Unchanged
LOS ANGELES (AP) — California's unemployment rate remained fairly steady last month, creeping up one-tenth of a percentage point in August to 12.4 percent.
The state Employment Development Department said Friday that the jobless rate grew from 12.3 percent in June and July.
The state's unemployment rate hit a modern record of 12.6 percent in March and April. It has now held at or above 12 percent for 13 months since reaching 12 percent in August 2009.
California continues to exceed the nation's 9.6 percent unemployment rate, which increased from 9.5 percent for the month.
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Dennis Meyers, an economist with the state Department of Finance, said the slight increase isn't unexpected after the worst recession since the Great Depression.
"We're kind of at the very early, wobbly stage of a very prolonged recovery, and you're going to have these setbacks periodically," Meyers said.
The quarterly Anderson Forecast from the University of
California, Los Angeles, predicted this week that unemployment will gradually decline to an average of 12.2 percent for the year.
The state lost 33,500 non-farming jobs in August, according to Employment Development Department's survey of businesses. That's a decrease of 113,100 jobs from a year ago.
The decline reflected the continuing fallout from the loss of temporary jobs with the U.S. Census. Government jobs had the greatest decrease, but 7,700 of the 9,200 lost jobs were held by census workers.
The construction and manufacturing industries led the declines in eight other jobs categories last month. Over the last year, construction jobs are down 7.6 percent, a loss of 44,700 jobs, as the housing market falters.
Employment Development Department spokesman Kevin Callori said the state is no longer hemorrhaging jobs as it was in 2009, when it lost an average of 69,700 jobs a month.
More than 2.26 million people remained unemployed in California.
That's up 11,000 over the month, and an increase of 81,000 compared to August 2009.
More than 620,000 Californians were receiving unemployment
insurance benefits in August, down from July and August 2009.
New jobless claims also fell slightly.
Callori said that is because people are using up their jobless benefits or dropping out of the job market.
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