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Sacramento County jobless rate rises to 13% Sacramento County's 13 percent jobless rate in September neared the highest rates analysts have seen in the county in 20 years, officials reported Friday. Figures released Friday by the state Employment Development Department also showed California's September unemployment rate holding steady from August at 12.4 percent. Sacramento's poor showing came as sectors across the board continued to shed jobs. But government employment, a regional anchor, was hit particularly hard, a sign that the budget woes affecting local cities and school districts are taking their toll on the sector's workers, analysts said. "Government is not carrying its typical increase," said Alex Alvarado, a labor analyst at EDD. The government sector lost 600 jobs in the Sacramento region compared with August, and payrolls in the sector shrank by 3,600 from a year ago, according to the EDD. "There's a trickle-down effect," said university economist Suzanne O'Keefe of Sacramento State, who tracks employment trends. "It's getting more challenging in government, and they will have to cut (funding) even with federal stimulus spending." State budget cuts and the effects of record lows in area home building
add to the region's pain, said Jeff Michael, director of the Business
Forecasting Center at the University of the Pacific in Stockton. Jobless figures remained stubbornly high across the region in September. The September rate for the four-county Sacramento region rose to 12.5 percent from 12.4 percent in August. Unemployment was 11.5 percent in Placer County and 11.6 percent in Yolo County, both unchanged from August. The jobless rate in El Dorado County rose slightly, to 12 percent from 11.9 percent in August. Sacramento County's 13 percent rate flirted with the 20-year peak of 13.1 percent it reached in January and again in March this year, according to the EDD's Alvarado. The total number of jobs in the region also shrank by 3,800 in September from August, for a total of 808,700 – 100,000 below the region's pre-recession peak. The losses are more troubling, analysts say, because the region's population continues to rise. "There's not enough jobs to serve current residents," said O'Keefe. "There may not be a recession, but it feels like it." It does more and more at the area's career centers, where some job seekers' frustration has begun to deepen into distress, said Terri Carpenter of the Sacramento Employment and Training Agency. "We're seeing a lot of desperate people who are going into the holidays and have timed out of unemployment (benefits)," Carpenter said. "There are a lot of people walking into the career centers. They're stressed and waiting for that job to come down the pike." Add job seekers' frustration to employers' uncertainty about the future and it's a discouraging mix, said Jay Jurschak, president of Sacramento employment firm Pacific Staffing. "The biggest challenge is that there's not the confidence in the private sector to put in any investment when they don't know what's coming," he said. Thursday's devastating fire at the Westfield Galleria in Roseville was yet another setback for the region, forcing back to square one many who were hired for temporary holiday retail jobs. "A lot of these people just got picked up," Carpenter said. But seasonal retail jobs will be far from salvation for the region, she said. "The reality is seasonal employment will bring hope to some, but not enough for all." Source: Sacramento Bee |
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