SACRAMENTO – Gov. Gavin Newsom released the following statement regarding the latest jobs report showing that California created 44 percent of the nation’s new jobs in August, having added 104,300 new jobs last month, again creating more new jobs than any other state, but figures released by the state’s Employment Development Department show the Golden State’s unemployment rate remained the second-highest in the country.
“California continues to lead the nation’s economic recovery, creating 44 percent of the nation’s new jobs in August and ranking third in the nation in rate of job growth this year. These 104,300 new jobs, the fifth time this year of six-figure job growth, represent new paychecks for Californians and new employees on payroll for businesses. We still have more work to do in regaining those jobs lost to the pandemic, but this is promising progress for California’s economic recovery.”
This year, California’s rate of job growth ranks third compared to other states and has outpaced national trends. And, California has created a total of 774,200 jobs this year, twice as many as any other state. California’s 1.4 percentage point unemployment decrease from January 2021 through July 2021 tied with Rhode Island and Georgia as the sixth largest decrease among states over this period.
Of the 2,714,800 jobs lost in March and April 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, California has now regained 62.1 percent, or 1,686,000 jobs. Nine of California’s 11 industry sectors gained jobs in August. Government (+46,900) has the state’s largest month-over gain driven by hiring in Local Government Education as a new school year begins and public schools reopen. Professional & Business Services (+14,000) performed well as its Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services subsector has now regained all jobs it had lost since the beginning of the pandemic.
Despite the positive spin placed on the figures by the state, some economic experts have noted that the numbers are irrefutable: Many Californians aren’t going back to work.
According to CALMatters’ Emily Hoeven, although the Golden State created a whopping 44% of the nation’s new jobs last month, its unemployment rate remained the second-highest in the country at 7.5%, according to figures released Friday by the state Employment Development Department. That’s essentially unchanged from the 7.6% unemployment rate California notched in both July and June — and hardly different from the 7.7% rate in May, a month before the state ended most coronavirus restrictions and fully reopened its economy.
Moreover, nearly half of the 104,300 payroll jobs California added in August were government positions, a reflection of public schools desperately trying to fill teacher and substitute teacher shortages as kids return to campus. Santa Ana Unified School District, for example, is hiring so many people that its understaffed human resources department hasn’t been able to process payments quickly enough, forcing more than 100 educators to go without pay for more than a month.
Some experts had predicted that the federal government’s Sept. 4 cutoff of expanded unemployment benefits for 2.2 million Californians would prompt people to reenter the workforce, but there hasn’t been a noticeable shift so far. Around 55,000 Californians filed new jobless claims for the week ending Sept. 11, a decrease of fewer than 3,000 people from the week before, federal data show. And the Golden State lost more than 6,000 education and health services payroll jobs in August, exacerbating an already dire nurse shortage.
In a bid to attract new workers, the beloved Sacramento-area sushi restaurant Mikuni expanded benefits and hosted a job fair — but saw only three applicants. Eight of its nine locations will now close Mondays due to the staffing shortage.
The pandemic has hit working women especially hard. More than 40,000 women nationwide dropped out of the labor force between July and August as coronavirus outbreaks closed schools and the low-paying child care sector remained short nearly 127,000 workers.
—Emily Hoeven, CALMatters
Diane Barber, executive director of the Pennsylvania Child Care Association: “It’s this Catch-22. We don’t have the staff, so we can’t open the classrooms, so families can’t go back to work because they can’t find child care.”
