A newly released "early benchmark" of the official state jobs figures shows that payroll jobs declined by 32,000 from September 2023 through December 2023, whereas the official state tally showed growth of 117,000 jobs over that period. With the fourth quarter early revision, calendar year 2023 shows essentially no net job gains.
Preliminary reports suggest the state added 43,000 jobs in May. We interpret these figures with caution because recent reports have overstated the strength of the state's labor market in a few ways. First, recent reports have routinely overestimated job growth. Over the past 15 months, the preliminary report has been revised down by an average of 30,000 jobs each month. Secondly, the state's private-sector job market has fared notably worse than the topline monthly figures suggest, which have been bouyed by continued hiring in the public sector and publicly supported sectors. Beginning this month, we will report a hybrid real-time measure of the labor market (an average of the two main jobs surveys) that has more closely tracked actual job growth over the past year.
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.
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.