Region scores big job gains
Bay Area accounts for 41% of state’s employment growth last month, defying COVID-19 surge
The Bay Area job market soared to big gains in December, ending 2021 on a bright note despite fresh economic uncertainties unleashed by the omicron variant of the coronavirus, state officials reported Friday.
The nine-county region added 20,900 jobs in the last month of the year, according to figures released by the state Employment Development Department. Santa Clara County added 7,200 jobs, the San Francisco-San Mateo region gained 7,000 positions and the East Bay added 6,400, according to seasonally adjusted figures.
“In a tug-of-war between the positive economic momentum of the state’s economy and the headwind from COVID, California’s economy is making slow but steady progress forward,” Sung Won Sohn, a professor of finance and economics with Loyola Marymount University, wrote in a research note Friday regarding the latest jobs report.
The statewide unemployment rate improved to 6.5% in December, down from 7% in November, the EDD reported. That’s the lowest it has been since March 2020 at the start of the pandemic.
“California continues to create an outsized share of the nation’s new jobs, with 25 percent of the entire country’s job creation happening right here, part of the record 1 million new jobs that our state created throughout last year’s economic recovery,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday in a prepared release.
California added 50,200 jobs in December, EDD reported. And the Bay Area was the engine that powered a significant share of those increases, accounting for a whopping 41% of the state’s total.
“California continues to move in the right direction, with the Bay Area playing an outsized role,” said Michael Bernick, an employment attorney with law firm Duane Morris and a former director of the state EDD.
In 2021, the Bay Area added 214,900 jobs, this news organization’s analysis of the EDD figures shows.
“2021 was a pretty good year for residents able to work,” said Stephen Levy, director of the Palo Altobased Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “Bay Area job growth outpaced the nation.”
Job totals in the Bay Area increased 5.9% in 2021, just shy of California’s 6% growth. In contrast, the nation reported a 4.5% gain during the same one-year period.
The Bay Area’s job performance last year was a welcome counterpoint to a catastrophic 2020, when the nine-county region lost 427,500 jobs as the pandemic took hold, stay-athome orders were issued and businesses shut down to combat the spread of the coronavirus.
Last year, the San Francisco-San Mateo region added 84,900 jobs, Santa Clara County added 62,600 positions and the East Bay added 38,800.
Adding to the encouraging trends, the EDD reported that November’s revised job numbers were substantially better than the lackluster initial report the agency delivered.
Instead of adding just 8,900 jobs in November, one of the weakest totals of the year, the EDD’s revised figures show a much stronger gain of 18,000 jobs.
The tech sector was a huge source of the Bay Area’s solid December report, according to this news organization’s analysis of industry trends for the month provided by Beacon Economics and the UC Riverside Center for Forecasting.
Tech companies added 9,000 jobs in the Bay Area last month, accounting for 43.1% of the region’s total. The industry added 5,100 jobs in the San FranciscoSan
Mateo region, 3,700 in Santa Clara County and 400 in the East Bay, the Beacon-UC Riverside report shows.
The beleaguered hotel and restaurant industry also was a strong player last month, delivering 3,300 jobs last month in the Bay Area, Beacon and UC Riverside reported. The bulk of those were in the San Francisco-San Mateo urban area and in Santa Clara County.
Construction companies added 1,000 jobs in Santa Clara County, while health care employers added 1,700 positions in the East Bay. Plus, in an indication of more robust activity at the Port of Oakland, transportation companies and wholesalers added 1,300 jobs last month.
That all suggests that last month’s jobs rebound occurred in a range of industries, said Jeffrey Michael, executive director of the University of the Pacific’s Stockton-based Center for Business and Policy Research.
“The gains go beyond recovery in the devastated hospitality sector,” Michael said. “There is substantial job growth in the region’s traditional strengths in technology and business services.”
Some experts believe the Bay Area job market might finally be starting to fully recuperate from coronavirus-linked economic woes.
“It’s good to see the Bay Area putting up some impressive job growth numbers again, and hopefully some return to work efforts can resume in earnest as this latest wave dies down,” said Patrick Kallerman, vice president of research with the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.