CALIFORNIA- California added 141,000 jobs in February as more than a quarter of a million people returned to the workforce, state officials announced Friday, a reflection of the relaxation of virus restrictions on companies as more people join the workforce. vaccinate.
Employment in restaurants and hotels increased by more than 102,000 people, good news for an industry hard hit by intermittent government-imposed restrictions on the whims of an unpredictable virus.
California lost 155,400 jobs in December and January when Governor Gavin Newsom ordered a blanket lockdown amid a terrifying spike in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. But California regained 91% of those jobs in a single month, reducing the unemployment rate to 8.5%, according to new data from the California Employment Development Department.
“California’s work machine has been reignited after two dismal months,” said Sung Won Sohn, professor of finance and economics at Loyola Marymount University.
But California’s recovery appears to lag behind the rest of the country. Its unemployment rate is more than 2 percentage points higher than that of the United States as a whole, placing Connecticut in the third highest rate among the states behind Hawaii and New York.
California has regained just 39% of the 2.7 million jobs lost in March and April of last year when the economy crashed. Meanwhile, Sohn said the United States as a whole has regained 56% of the jobs lost.
Overall, California had 1.2 million fewer jobs in February than a year ago. The state processed more than 108,000 unemployment claims last week, the second week in a row, new claims surpassed 100,000 after a decline in February.
“Today’s numbers are not consistent with the other employment indicators we’ve seen in recent weeks,” said Michael Bernick, former director of the California Department of Employment Development and now an attorney for Duane Morris. “I think these numbers need to be balanced with, as I say, other employment indicators.”
Still, the decline in the number of new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations points to an improvement in the number of jobs in the coming weeks. More than 94% of the state’s population now lives in counties free of the most severe virus restrictions in the state.
California has been receiving about 1.8 million doses of vaccines per week. But it is expected to increase to 3 million doses per week by mid-April, enough for Newsom to announce Thursday that all adults will be eligible to receive the vaccine starting April 15.
“There is growing confidence that the fund has definitely been left behind,” Sohn said.
But the economic impacts of the pandemic are likely to persist. About 1 in 5 workers in California have claimed unemployment benefits for more than six months, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan California Policy Lab at the University of California. The analysis said that long-term unemployment “is known to have long-lasting ‘scarring’ effects on workers and the economy.”
Since the pandemic began, more than 45% of workers who were in California’s workforce in February 2020 have claimed unemployment benefits. Almost 90% of black workers have filed for unemployment benefits.
“African Americans have filed for unemployment benefits at staggering rates, further proof of the inequalities we must address to ensure a strong and equitable recovery,” said California Secretary of Labor Julie A. Su and Dee Dee Myers, director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economy in a statement.
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