Los Angeles County’s unemployment rate fell to 8.9 percent in November from 9.4 percent in October amid a hiring surge that saw employers in the county add 43,000 payroll jobs, according to state figures released Dec. 17.
November’s figure represents the first time since March 2020 that the rate fell below 9 percent and is a significant improvement from a year ago, when county’s unemployment rate was 12.5 percent. And it represents exactly half the peak of 18.8 percent reached in May 2020 at the maximum extent of the pandemic-related shutdown of much of the economy.
Yet L.A. County’s unemployment rate continued to lag downward progress statewide, where the rate stood at 6.9 percent in November. And it was more than double the national unemployment rate of 4.2 percent.
The county now has gained back exactly two-thirds of the 773,000 jobs lost during the spring 2020 pandemic-induced lockdown. But it’s still roughly 351,000 jobs short of the Feb. 2020 level, just before the shutdown.