Mother Lode unemployment, population continue decline

New data released on Friday showed the unemployment rates for Tuolumne and Calaveras counties continued to decline in November, while the estimated populations of both as of July 1 also decreased from the same point in 2020.

The updated statistics were provided in separate reports by the California Employment Development Department and California Department of Finance, which also showed statewide unemployment and population numbers were following the same downward trajectory.

Tuolumne County’s preliminary jobless rate in November dropped to 5.4% from a revised rate of 6% in October, though the size of the labor force also declined by 0.4% from 19,690 to 19,610 over the same period.

It was the county’s lowest unemployment rate since hitting 5.9% in March 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread and statewide lockdown measures were enacted that kept many businesses shuttered.

November’s rate was also inching closer to the 5.1% that the county posted in February 2020 just prior to the pandemic-related lockdown measures, which led to a record-high of 19.9% workers in the county who found themselves unemployed that April.

Calaveras County’s preliminary unemployment rate for November was 4.2%, down from 4.7% in October and just 0.1% higher than February 2020. However, the labor force also shrunk from 21,640 in October to 21,500 last month.

The rates for both counties in November were lower than the statewide rate of 6.9%, which itself was down from 7.3% in October. Calaveras County’s was equal to the national unemployment rate for the same month, a low since the start of the pandemic.

California has now regained nearly 1.9 million jobs, or about 69.5%, of the more than 2.7 million that were lost in March and April 2020 due to the pandemic, according to the state EDD.

Professional and business services had the highest job gains

of any of the state’s 11 industry sectors, with more than 18,800 out of a total of 45,700 nonfarm jobs added statewide in November, the state EDD said.

However, population estimates released the same day by the state Department of Finance showed Tuolumne and Calaveras counties were following the same downward trend from the previous year as the state overall.

Tuolumne County’s population declined by 689 residents between July 1, 2020, and the same date earlier this year, from 55,500 to 54,811, according to the estimates.

The state Department of Finance also reported that contributing factors to Tuolumne County’s year-over-year decline included a natural decrease by 368 due to there being 766 deaths compared with 398 births.

Another component of Tuolumne County’s population loss was due to 321 more residents moving away than the number who moved to the county over the same period.

Walter Schwarm, the Department of Finance’s chief demographer, confirmed on Monday that the estimates for Tuolumne County also included inmate population as of July 1 at Sierra Conservation Center state prison in Jamestown.

There were 3,223 prisoners locked up in SCC as of Wednesday, weekly population reports from the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation showed. That was up slightly from 3,200 on July 1 this year and down significantly from 4,039 on July 1, 2020.

Calaveras County saw a small decline from 45,277 on July 1, 2020, to 45,111 on the same date this year, though a state prison is not located there.

Components to the change in Calaveras County included 226 more deaths than births, though 60 more people moved to the county than moved out of it during that period.

The statewide population declined by 173,000 people to about 39.37 million from July 1, 2020, to the same date this year, which was the first year-over-year decline for that date since at least 2010.

According to the department, it followed a similar pattern of population decline reported in January 2021 due to continuing declines in natural increase from more people dying than being born, foreign immigration due to changes in federal policy, and increases in overall deaths caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Other data released by the state earlier this year showed Tuolumne County had more deaths in 2020 than at least the past seven years and was on track to have even more in 2021.