Bay Area job market surges, but ‘warning signs’ surface
South Bay becomes region's strongest
BAY AREA >> The Bay Area job market powered to strong gains to cap off 2019, and Santa Clara County was the region’s economic leader, according to a new state government survey released on Friday.
The nine-county Bay Area added 2,900 jobs in December, a monthly report by the state’s Employment Development Department showed.
“In the Bay Area, the San Jose region led the way,” said Taner Osman, a research manager with Beacon Economics.
In December, Santa Clara County gained 1,500 jobs, the East Bay added 900 positions, while the San Francisco-San Mateo region lost 400 jobs, according to the EDD report. Santa Cruz County lost 500 jobs. All the numbers were adjusted for seasonal variations.
The Bay Area job market wound up being considerably stronger in 2019 than in 2018.
Employers in the Bay Area added 91,500 jobs during 2019, which was 2.3
percent more than the jobs the 80,500 jobs the region added in 2018, this news organization’s analysis of the EDD report showed.
Yet despite the improvement for the entire year, some indicators have begun to sprout that suggest the employment gains in the Bay Area became less robust as 2019 wore on.
Over the first six months of 2019, the Bay Area added 66,700 jobs. But over the final six months of 2019, Bay Area job gains totaled 24,800.
“There are warning signs for Bay Area employment trends,” said Stephen Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “We are seeing slowing population growth, which is a warning sign. Unless more people move here, employers face hiring challenges.”
Of the three major urban centers in the Bay Area that have at least 1 million jobs, the South Bay was the strongest last year, the analysis of the EDD data determined.
In 2019, Santa Clara County added 33,200 jobs, compared with a gain of 29,800 in the San Francisco-San Mateo area, and an increase of 19,800 positions in the East Bay.
“The Bay Area economic story, particularly in the South Bay, is that companies want to expand, they want to hire people here,” Levy said. “The question is where will companies find
people to hire, given the high housing prices and the slow pace of building new homes.”
The tech industry in the Bay Area and California is providing plenty of fuel for the regional and statewide economies, according to economist Sung Won Sohn.
“Technology has healthy upward momentum,” Sohn stated on Friday in his analysis of the statewide job picture. “Professional and business services, which includes scientific and technical services such as software engineers, system analysts, and scientific research and development, remains a workhorse in the state’s economy.”
The California jobless rate was 3.9 percent in December, which kept the unemployment rate statewide at the lowest level on record.
“December marked the end of an impressive year for the state’s economy,” Beacon’s Osman said.
California added 12,600 nonfarm payroll jobs last month, the EDD reported. For all of 2019, California added 310,300 jobs during 2019, according to the EDD report.
“The potential for more employment growth ahead is good” in California, Sohn wrote in his report.
California’s job market grew at an annual pace of 1.8 percent, which was well ahead of the nationwide increase in nonfarm payroll jobs of 1.4 percent.
Yet both the state and the nation lagged far behind the pace of job gains in the Bay Area during 2019.