Post-COVID jobs recovery lags other states

Even as other states surpass their pre-pandemic job levels, the Bay Area and California have recuperated from coronavirus-linked business shutdowns and closures at a mediocre pace.

The feeble rebound means a full recovery from COVID-spawned job losses remains months away, and has prompted some experts to warn that the Golden State and Silicon Valley aren't guaranteed to always rule the economic roost.

“California and the Bay Area can no longer take their economic and job growth engines for granted,” said Scott Anderson, chief economist with Bank of the West.

The state has recovered 89.3% of the jobs it lost during March and April 2020, the first two months of the business lockdowns, placing it 25th out of 50 states, this news organization's analysis of federal reports shows. The Bay Area has fared even worse — regaining just 77.8% of its vanished employment. The nine-county region, were it a state, would be ranked No. 43.

“The job growth engine has sputtered,” Anderson said.

One reason for the relatively sluggish performance is that California, and the Bay Area in particular, instituted some of the nation's most restrictive measures to combat the coronavirus.

Public health officials credit those measures with saving the lives of hundreds of people who might have otherwise succumbed to the virus.

“The Bay Area was far more cautious and conservative than other parts of the country,” said Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a San Jose-based think tank. “Other places sort of closed down but we went whole hog, shuttering the entire in-person economy.”

But local pandemic measures also caused economic pain — and allowed states that weren't as cautious to surge ahead.

“Jobs have been far slower to recover in the Bay Area than much of the rest of California and fallen well below the best pace of the most vibrant areas of the country,” Anderson said. “This is a stark change from the post-Great Recession recovery when the Bay Area frequently led the state and nation's economic expansion.”

California, the Bay Area, Santa Clara County, the East Bay and the San Francisco-San Mateo region lag well behind the nationwide recovery pace of 92.8%, the analysis of figures posted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows.

And while California has yet to even reach the 90% recovery milestone, 13 of the nation's states have regained more jobs than they lost during the first two months of the business shutdowns.