California businesses lost 3,400 jobs in February, and the January figure was revised downward by 32,500. The state's unemployment rate continued to climb and now stands at 5.3 percent. With February's increase, more than 1 million Californians are now unemployed. The "Sahm rule," a real-time recession indicator that first triggered a year ago, continues to signal an economic downturn.
Each year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics revises the state's jobs number to match actual payroll records from businesses. The latest revision lowered its count of California jobs by 1.5 percent. The corrected data show that the state added just 50,000 jobs between September 2022 and September 2023, while preliminary monthly reports had showed the labor market growing by more than 300,000 jobs.
The administration's most recent Unemployment Insurance (UI) Trust Fund forecast shows that UI benefit payments will exceed state payroll tax receipts by $1.7 billion in 2024, after surpassing receipts by $1.3 billion in 2023. As a result, the state's outstanding UI loan from the federal government is set to increase over the next two years, despite automatic employer payroll tax increases to repay the loan.
October and November holiday season retail job growth remained relatively weak for the second year in a row. One plausible explanation for this weakness might be the continued transition to online holiday shopping, but transportation and warehousing jobs (where goods and packaged and delivered) has also been sluggish this holiday season.
A newly released "early benchmark" of the official state jobs figures shows that payroll jobs remained essentially flat from September 2022 through June 2023, whereas the soon-to-be-revised official state tally showed growth of 2.1 percent over that period. This amounts to a 9-month job gain of just 6k, compared to the unbenched of 282k jobs.
California added 84,800 jobs in July, about twice the level of recent months. Job gains for June were revised upward as well, from 19k to 37k.
California businesses added 19,900 jobs in June, about half as much as recent months and the slowest gain since last September.
California businesses added 42,900 net jobs in May (seasonally adjusted), about the same as April and another month of slower job growth than seen in the past year.
California employers added 41,400 net jobs in April (seasonally adjusted), the smallest net gain in the past six months.
California employers added 60,200 jobs net jobs March (seasonally-adjusted), a 4.2 percent increase on an annual basis.
California employers added 50,700 net jobs in December, representing annualized growth of 3.6 percent.
California employers added 96,800 net jobs in October, the highest monthly figure since July.
California employers added an estimated net 47,400 jobs in September, the smallest monthly gain since January.
California employers added 104,300 net new jobs in August, a strong showing despite the national slowdown.
California employers created an estimated 114,400 net jobs in July, the biggest gain since February.