California adds jobs, but unemployment rate rises

California added 67,000 seasonally adjusted jobs last month, but the state’s unemployment rate still ticked up a fraction of a percentage point as continued layoffs in technology and other sectors took a bite out of growth.

The unemployment rate statewide climbed from 4.4% in March to 4.5% in April, state data show. Information industry jobs, which include tech roles, grew by only 500 between March and

April, near the fewest for any industry the state tracks.

“Just about everything is sort of flat as a pancake except leisure and hospitality and health care,” said Julia Pollak, chief labor economist at jobs site ZipRecruiter. She added that growth in some industries might be more robust were it not for the slowed growth in the information sector.

Pollak said that by one metric known as the Sahm Rule, California entered an economic recession last month.

Of the nine Bay Area counties, San Mateo County had the lowest unemployment rate in April, at 2.5%, while Solano County had the highest, at 4.2%. San Francisco’s remained relatively steady at 2.7%, compared to 4.5% in Los Angeles County.

California’s unemployment rate has been rising more or less steadily since last summer, Pollak said, noting the state now has the third-highest unemployment rate in the nation, behind Nevada and Washington, D.C.

Nationwide figures released Friday morning showed that California was tied for the highest percentage growth in jobs in April, however, with a 0.4% gain that matched increases in Arizona and New Jersey.

The state’s employment has risen compared to April last year, with 426,000 jobs added statewide, for an increase of 2.4%. Yet over the same period, California’s unemployment rate has risen by nearly half a percentage point.

California’s “job growth is still moderately positive,” Pollak said, but many industries were seeing only modest gains.

Bright spots included the health care sector and the leisure and hospitality industries, which saw 21,700 and 13,100 jobs added month over month, respectively.