Hopeful signs as California adds 141,000 jobs in February

California added 141,000 jobs in February as more than a quarter of a million people returned to the workforce, state officials announced Friday, a reflection of loosening virus restrictions on businesses as more people get vaccinated.

Employment in restaurants and hotels surged by more than 102,000 people, welcome news for an industry hit hard by the onagain, off-again restrictions imposed by the government at the whims of an unpredictable virus.

The state lost 155,400 jobs in December and January when Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered a sweeping lockdown amid frightening increases of cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

But California gained 91% of those jobs back in a single month, dropping the unemployment rate to 8.5%, according to new data from the California Employment Development Department.

That’s the lowest rate since the pandemic began.

“The California job machine has been turned back on after a dismal two months,” said Sung Won Sohn, a professor of finance and economics at Loyola Marymount University.

But California’s recovery appears to lag the rest of the country. Its unemployment rate is more than 2 percentage points higher than the U.S. as a whole, tying Connecticut for the third highest rate among states behind Hawaii and New York.

California has regained just 39% of the 2.7 million jobs lost in March and April of last year when the bottom fell out of the economy. Meanwhile, Sohn said the U.S. as a whole has regained 56% of jobs lost.

Overall, California had 1.2 million fewer jobs in February than it did a year ago. The state processed more than 108,000 unemployment claims last week, the second week in a row that new claims have surpassed 100,000 after a decline in February.

“Today’s numbers are not consistent with the other employment indicators that we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks,” said Michael Bernick, a former director of the California Employment Development Department now an attorney with Duane Morris. “I think these numbers need to be balanced with, as I say, other employment indicators.”