L.A. County’s jobs picture in November was a case of good news and bad news.
First the good news: Employers in Los Angeles County added on net nearly 15,000 jobs, completing the process of wiping out the 784,000 jobs lost in the county during the two-month pandemic-induced shutdown of the economy in March and April 2020.
Now the bad news: The unemployment rate in Los Angeles County hit the 6% threshold in November for the first time since Feb. 2022, rising from 5.9% in October. The number of county residents who reported in November that they were working fell by 9,000, while the ranks of the officially unemployed rose by 5,000.
Those mixed trends were the key takeaways from the monthly Los Angeles County unemployment and payroll jobs data release on Dec. 20 from the state Employment Development Department.
On the unemployment front, the 6.0% rate for Los Angeles County was up from 5.3% a year ago. It also was higher than the 5.4% unemployment rate for all of California in November and way higher than the national level of 4.2% for that same month.
The Employment Development Department also released a breakout of November unemployment rates by city, though unlike the countywide average, these are not adjusted for seasonal factors. The November rates for the two largest cities in the county – Los Angeles and Long Beach – were 5.9% and 5.8% respectively, each down three-tenths of a percentage point from October.
Among cities with labor forces exceeding 10,000, Lomita had the lowest seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate of 2.4% in November, while Calabasas had the highest rate at 8.3%.
For cities in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita, Antelope and Conejo valleys with labor forces exceeding 10,000, the city of San Fernando had the lowest seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate in November of 4.5%, followed by Santa Clarita at 5.4% and Glendale at 5.7%.
At the high end in the quad-valley area, after Calabasas and its 8.3% unemployment rate in November, next were Lancaster and Palmdale (both at 8.0%). Burbank’s rate came in at 7.2%.
On the payroll jobs front, county employers added 14,900 jobs to their payrolls in November for a total of 4.64 million. That total topped the 4.62 million jobs in February 2020, just before the pandemic hit, meaning the county has fully recovered the jobs lost in that devastating pandemic-induced shutdown of the economy.
However, this is not the first time the February 2020 level has been topped. That first time was in March of last year. And the numbers kept rising to a record 4.72 million payroll jobs in December. But, those gains were illusory. That’s because in March of this year, the Employment Development Department issued its annual revision of the jobs data, which resulted in the disappearance of 110,000 jobs from that December total. According to the revised data, those 110,000 jobs never existed, which put the revised jobs tally back below the February 2020 threshold.
Whether this second time over the February 2020 mark survives the next data revision remains to be seen.
Returning to the present day, seasonal hiring in the retail sector led the way with a net gain of 10,700 jobs in November.
The state Employment Development Department also releases a seasonally adjusted payroll jobs figure each month that accounts for expected seasonal variations like retail hiring around the holidays. For November, that set of adjusted figures for overall payroll employment in Los Angeles County showed a slight drop of 900 jobs from the October level.
Other sectors with substantial gains (unadjusted for seasonal factors) were health care/social assistance (up 5,400 jobs) and motion picture/sound recording (up 3,600).
The accommodation/food services sector shed the most payroll jobs in November, down a net 4,900. Payroll jobs in the construction sector declined by 3,400, while the manufacturing sector fell by 2,100 jobs.
For the 12-month period ending in November, employer payrolls in the county rose by 46,200, or exactly 1%. That’s about half the growth rate of a couple years ago, when the county was in full recovery mode from the pandemic.
The sector with the biggest payroll job gains over the 12-month period ending in November was health care/social assistance, which surged by more than 36,000 jobs. A number of other sectors reported comparatively modest gains, including retail trade (up 7,500), and government (up 2,400 jobs).
The manufacturing sector saw a decrease of 10,400 jobs over the 12-month period ending in November to about 309,000. That continues a long-term sectoral decline: In March 1990, there were 834,000 manufacturing jobs in Los Angeles County, which means the sector shed 63% of those jobs in the ensuing 34-plus years.
Besides manufacturing, the only other sector with significant job loss over the 12 months ending in November was construction, which shed 2,400 jobs.
