California's Employment Development Department released the state's September 2016 jobs report on October 21. Summarized above, the report showed that seasonally-adjusted nonfarm payroll employment grew by a net 30,000 jobs in September, driven largely by net gains in the leisure and hospitality sector, as well as health care. Manufacturing (including food processing, computers, and fabricated metals) and retail trade jobs declined in September. The official unemployment rate held steady at 5.5% for the month with a very large increase in the labor force (that is, people actively looking for work).
As summarized in the table above, for the 18 major job sectors we track, 11 sectors (displayed in green) have grown more quickly than the U.S. as a whole over the past year, 5 sectors (black) have grown, but more slowly than the U.S., over the past year, and 2 sectors (red) saw their number of jobs decline in California over the past year. (For comparison, as of the August jobs report, 10 sectors were green, 6 were black, and the same 2 sectors were red.)
Additional tidbits about the September jobs report came from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data:
- About two-thirds of California metro areas have had job growth rates above the national average over the last year.
- The Bay Area and Sacramento are near the top for annual job growth rates among large U.S. metro areas.
- The Bay Area, Napa, and Santa Rosa metro areas tied for 82nd lowest among 387 U.S. metros with their 3.8% September unemployment rates.
- Among 25 U.S. metro areas with the highest September unemployment rates, 10 were in California, including El Centro at 22.7%.