Marginal drop to California unemployment in September as COVID-19 recovery stays slow
California unemployment fell very slightly last month, officials said Friday, as the state economy continues slow progress recovering jobs lost to the coronavirus pandemic.
The state reported an unemployment rate of 11% for September, improving marginally from 11.2% in August, the Employment Development Department said. Payrolls grew by 96,000, following 113,800 jobs added in August, according to the monthly EDD report.
EDD has said 2.6 million jobs were wiped out in March and April due to the pandemic, and still only about one-third of that total has been recovered. Gov. Gavin Newsom issued California’s statewide stay-at-home order on March 19 in response to the arrival and emerging spread of the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease known as COVID-19. The governor’s order has remained in place since then, at differing levels of strictness.
The leisure and hospitality sector saw the largest growth at over 48,000 estimated jobs gained in September, buoyed by “large growth in Accommodation and Food Services,” the state agency said in a news release.
Newsom and state health officials at the very end of August unveiled a new economic reopening system that uses four color-coded tiers to assess COVID-19 risk levels in California’s 58 counties, determining which types of businesses may reopen and under which sets of restrictions.
Key within that new reopening framework is the ability for counties to let restaurants reopen for indoor dining, with a 25% capacity limit, after being promoted one level from the most-restrictive purple tier, denoting “widespread” COVID-19 activity, to the red one (“substantial”).
The system began Sept. 1 with 38 counties, combining for roughly 35 million residents, placed in the purple tier. By Sept. 29, after four weekly updates to the list, 20 of those counties accounting for nearly 18 million people had improved to the red tier or better, meaning thousands of restaurants could reopen in limited capacity across the state.
EDD’s monthly unemployment report used data from the survey week including Sept. 12, so employment figures in Friday’s report would not have included gains coming in the latter half of the month as more counties moved into less restrictive tiers. Next month’s report for October, which will include revisions for September, should give a clearer picture of how the new framework is impacting employment in the state.
The biggest loss for the month came in government: an estimated 14,300 jobs, which the state said was primarily from census worker employment numbers dwindling as U.S. Census counting neared its end.
In the Sacramento metro area, unemployment dropped to 8.9% in September, down minimally from 9% in August. El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties reported an increase of 4,600 jobs for a total of 950,500, which is 7.7% lower than reported for September 2019.
Growth between this August and September in the Sacramento region came primarily from state and local government (about 4,100 jobs) and health care and social assistance (1,600 jobs). Losses came mainly in farm, finance and other related services, with a few hundred in each. Leisure and hospitality figures remained steady, EDD’s report said.
This story was originally published October 16, 2020 at 10:56 AM with the headline "Marginal drop to California unemployment in September as COVID-19 recovery stays slow."
