State jobless rates leaps to 9.3%

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California's unemployment rate surged to 9.3 percent in December as employers cut 78,200 jobs, pushing joblessness to a level not seen since 1994, the state Employment Development Department said Friday.

The nearly 1 percent jump from November's 8.4 percent unemployment rate is the largest one-month increase ever recorded by state officials since they started tracking this data in 1976.

"I'm stunned at the increase in the rate," said Jon Haveman with Beacon Economics in San Rafael, who said more Californians went looking for work in December while employers cut jobs.

The U.S. unemployment rate in December was 7.2 percent.

Department officials said the highest state unemployment rate ever recorded was 11 percent at the end of 1982 during a severe recession. During another downturn in late 1992 and early 1993, the state jobless rate hovered at 9.9 percent.

Haveman said California's job market has not hit bottom yet. He doubts that the statewide rate will take another huge leap when January's numbers are reported, but he could not rule that out.

"Economically we're in uncharted waters," Haveman said. "We haven't seen anything like this certainly since the end of World War II and maybe since the Great Depression."

Most sectors of the state economy are losing jobs. The department tracks payrolls in 11 broad industrial areas. Of these, only three sectors had more people on payrolls this December than last year at this time - educational and health services; government; and natural resources and mining.

But construction, professional and business services and leisure and hospitality all were down.

In the Bay Area, unemployment rose in the San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland metropolitan areas, but all three locales had stronger job markets than the state as a whole.

Metropolitan San Francisco, which includes Marin and San Mateo counties, was the state's strongest job market, with a December unemployment rate of 6.1 percent. But that is still up sharply from the 4.1 percent rate of December 2007.

In metropolitan San Jose, made up of Santa Clara and San Benito counties, the December unemployment rate was 7.8 percent, up from 5.1 percent the previous year.

In the Oakland metropolitan area, covering Alameda and Contra Costa counties, the unemployment rate was 7.7 percent. A year ago it was 5 percent.

December bad for retailers

Retailers typically increase payrolls in December, but an analysis by state labor market analyst Ruth Kavanagh shows that even those jobs dried up last month. Over the past 18 years, retailers in the region's three metropolitan areas have added an average of 9,200 jobs in December. But Kavanagh said retail payrolls actually shrank by 700 jobs last month.

The numbers mask the human toll. The state counted 1.7 million Californians as unemployed in January, meaning they had searched fruitlessly for work within the past four weeks. A year ago at this time, roughly a third as many people, 653,000, fit that description.

Amy Gorman, a former business owner who took time off to be a stay-at-home mom in the East Bay, has been looking since September to no avail.

"Everything is being delayed," said Gorman, who has interviews but no offers in her chosen field of solar sales.

San Rafael resident Mike Altman has some contract work while he looks for a permanent position in private equity, mergers or corporate finance.

"I'm hitting my head against the wall," Altman said.

'Looking for best of best'

San Francisco resident Sarah Gilson is having a tough time putting her new law degree to work in a hard-pressed local legal market.

"You're trying to convince people you are a good investment when nobody has the funds to invest," she said.

Burton Goldfield, chief executive of TriNet HR Services, a San Leandro firm that does hiring and payroll for small businesses, said employers in this type of job market set the bar high. "I'm looking for the best of the best," he said.

He advised job seekers to be persistent and seek referrals when they get wind of an opening. "The last five people I hired all had recommendations from people I knew," Goldfield said.

Employment professionals say even in tough times some jobs open up. One repository for those looking for work - or needing to hire - is the employment department's job board at www.caljobs.ca.gov.

But many jobs are being destroyed. A database of pending layoffs, collected by the state and displayed on sfgate.com, shows almost 650 warning notices issued by employers in a wide array of industries and cities.

To view the database, go to sfgate.com/webdb/jobcuts.