Despite a healthy-looking jobs report, experts say to expect more job losses with COVID-19 on the rise and reopening dialed back.
California added 558,200 jobs from mid-May to mid-June and state unemployment fell from 16.4% to 14.9% — but don’t start celebrating yet. The numbers don’t account for the resurgence of COVID-19 cases throughout the U.S. and in California in the last half of June or the retreat in plans to reopen the economy. The numbers were released Friday morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which slightly revised the earlier jobless figure from 16.3% to 16.4%.
“In some cases, workers rehired in June have been laid off [again] within a short time,” he said. “In other cases, companies decide they can no longer hang on. Every day brings reports of businesses announcing they are closing permanently in California.” Still, he said, the job gain is the highest in the nation, and probably the largest monthly jobs gain since World War II.But any recovery will be jerky.
The jobs picture in Los Angeles County, which added 200,000 jobs, was worse than that in the state as a whole, although the unemployment rate declined, from a revised 21.1% in May to 19.5% in June. Orange County, with a gain of 71,600 jobs, saw the rate moderate from a revised 14.7% to 13.7%. The rate for Inland Empire declined from a revised 15.1% to 14.3% as the area added 41,300 jobs.The impact of the pandemic has varied considerably by economic sector.
“Let me be clear, half a million new jobs is good news,” said Fernando Lozano, labor economics professor at Pomona College. But, he said, “the fall in unemployment is most modest in regions that are highly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.”In agriculture-based Imperial County, the rate barely moved, slipping from 27.8% to 27.5%. Imperial tops the state in COVID-19 prevalence with 824.6 per 100,000 residents.
In the meantime, freelance and gig worker new jobless claims rose 126,000. Between regular unemployment and the freelance-gig program, 7.8 million claims have been filed in California since the pandemic started.Add to that the 14.3 million freelancers and gig workers receiving money from the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, and the total number of people receiving jobless benefits in the U.S. is about 32 million.
In February, before the serious nature of the pandemic became clear in the U.S., national unemployment was about 3.5%, near a 50-year low.Current unemployment dwarfs the 132,800 California jobs lost at the height of the Great Recession between December 2008 and January 2009.
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