In Fresno County, some industries have yet to regain jobs lost to the pandemic in 2020
When 2020 began – and it seems to many people like it was much more than a year ago – the unemployed in Fresno County numbered about 36,600.
By the end of 2020, the global coronavirus pandemic and the measures taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19 had sent the number of people out of work in Fresno – and across the Valley, the state and the nation – rocketing into the stratosphere before ever-so-slowly receding. Unemployment peaked last year in April, with almost 76,000 Fresno County residents out of work and an unemployment rate of 16.9%.
At year’s end, more than 46,000 people were still officially counted as unemployed in Fresno County, according to the California Employment Development Department, based on a December survey of employers across the county. That amounts to about 10.4% of working-age adults who were available to work but could not find a job.
Throughout the second half of the year, unemployment was inching lower from the pandemic peak. But a year-end spike in COVID-19 cases triggered a new round of business restrictions and closures, generating the year’s second-largest increase in joblessness – about 8,600 workers – in Fresno County between November and December.
Fresno County’s average monthly unemployment rate for the year was about 11.3%.
Similar patterns were seen in neighboring counties in the central San Joaquin Valley.
- Kings County started the year with an unemployment rate of 9.4% and peaked in April when the rate reached 17.0%. In December, the rate was 11.0%.
- Madera County’s unemployment rate was 8.1% in January, reached as high as 16.7% in April and ended the year at 9.9% in December. Madera County was the only Valley county to end the year with a rate of less than 10%.
- Merced County opened 2020 with a January unemployment rate of 9.8% and peaked in April at 18.7%. The rate drifted back down to 11.5% in December.
- Tulare County’s unemployment rate in January was 11.0% and soared to 19.3% in April before settling to 11.8% in December.
Across the five-county region, a total of 155,400 people were out of work at the peak of the pandemic’s effects on unemployment. In December, the number was 94,500.
In Fresno County, almost all major industry sectors had regained some of the jobs that evaporated in the spring. But a few remained well below where they were in February, before the first local cases of coronavirus were confirmed and before state and local officials implemented stringent business restrictions and stay-at-home orders to prevent transmission of the virus in the community.
The leisure/hospitality industry, which includes workers in food service including restaurants and bars, hotels and motels, and recreational businesses, had about 25,000 employees in December – about 6,700 fewer than before the pandemic.
Retailers reported total employment in Fresno County of 37,500 workers, about 1,300 below where they were in February. And with about 13,300 employees in December, the wholesale trade was down about 1,500 from before the pandemic.
Local government agencies, including cities, counties and school districts, have lost about 4,900 positions, dipping from 53,500 jobs in February to 48,600 in December.
