Jobless rate dips to 4.8% in October
The Humboldt County unemployment rate improved slightly to 4.8% in October, according to preliminary numbers released by the Employment Development Department on Friday.
Local labor market analyst Randy Weaver takes it as a bit of “good news.”
“The best news is that the labor force from comparing this October to October 2020 was up about 1,100 people,” he told the Times-Standard on Friday morning. “And so we definitely need to have people come back into the labor force. I know that since August
of last year, it’s been a little erratic from month to month, it surges up and down. But overall, there’s been more people coming back and that’s definitely good news.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom also welcomed the news.
“California has again created more new jobs than any other state — averaging six-figure job growth for nine months straight — an unprecedented achievement as our economy continues to recover from the pandemic,” Newsom said in a prepared statement. ” But there’s more work to be done, and we’re laser-focused on supporting those hardest hit by the pandemic and getting folks back on the job.”
Statewide, California employers bounced back in a big way last month as they added 96,800 new jobs and lowered the state’s unemployment rate to 7.3%.
The news release from Newsom’s office noted with October’s job growth, 67.4% of the 2.7 million jobs lost between March and April 2020 as a result of the pandemic are “now regained.”
But a big reason California can add so many new jobs is because of how many jobs it lost at the start of the pandemic. It’s taken 18 months to add back those lost jobs as California’s coronavirus restrictions, both at the state and local level, have lingered longer than other states. While California’s unemployment rate fell to 7.3% in October compared to 7.5% in September, it’s still tied with Nevada for the highest rate in the country.
In Humboldt County, there has been growth in a few areas. In areas of construction, logging and mining, there are gains of hundreds of jobs compared with October 2020, but between August and October 2021, there is no growth.
But, Weaver notes, there is still more growth possible — even just to return to pre-pandemic workforce levels.
“Leisure and hospitality, looking over the last 10 years, typically over the summer would have had employment like north of 5,000 people, and it never really broke that this year,” he said. “So clearly, some of the employment in that industry hasn’t come back where other areas like health and educational services, the pandemic was kind of a blip.”
As far as specific areas of the county are concerned, Arcata and Rio Dell posted the highest unemployment rates in October 2021 with rates of 7.4% and 8.5% respectively. Blue Lake, Ferndale and Fortuna help the lower end of the scale with rates of 2.7%, 3.6% and 4.5% respectively.
The big question in the months ahead is how rising prices because of inflation will impact the job market in California and the nation. Inflation can lead to increased wages for workers. But higher prices can also prompt consumers to buy less, which would slow demand and convince employers to shed jobs.
Right now, price increases are driven by increased demand combined with a shortage of goods caused by disruption in the supply chain. While inflation has averaged about 2% for the past decade, it has exceeded 5% since June, according to California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office.