Calif. still losing jobs; recovery likely soon
SACRAMENTO — California lost close to 70,000 jobs in January as the coronavirus pandemic stretched into the new year, but the unemployment rate dropped slightly as more people stopped looking for work amid another round of state-imposed lockdowns.
Numbers released
Friday by the Employment Development Department show the nation’s most populous state lost 69,900 jobs in January. Coupled with revised numbers from December, the state lost 145,300 jobs over those two months, slowing the recovery.
California has regained about 39 percent of the more than 2.7 million jobs lost in March and April 2020 when the pandemic took hold.
But since January 2020, more than 768,000 people have stopped looking for work, a number likely driven by the demands of caring for children during virtual learning and people seeking advanced degrees as they wait for the economy to improve. This past January, 36,500 people left the workforce, contributing to the unemployment rate falling to 9 percent from 9.3 percent in December despite the state posting a net job loss.
The biggest losses were in the leisure and hospitality sector, which includes restaurants and hotels that have been hit hardest by public health orders restricting travel and dining. The sector lost 70,600 jobs in January, and it’s down nearly 800,000 jobs since January 2020.
While California forced restaurants to halt indoor and outdoor dining in December, many restaurants kept their employees into January, until they couldn’t any longer, said Jot Condie, president and CEO of the California Restaurant Association.
“I think our workforce has been jerked around like no other workforce in the state,” he said.
The job numbers released Friday are based on surveys conducted the week of Jan. 12, when the state was averaging more than 50,000 new COVID-19 cases per day and hospital intensive care units were at full capacity in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley.
Now, California is averaging less than 4,000 new cases per day and hospitalizations have declined more than 84 percent.