California September 2008 unemployment steady at 7.7%
California’s unemployment rate in September held steady at 7.7%, which is higher than the national rate of 6.1%, which also held steady in September.
Although the rate leveled off in September, there is no way to tell if the rate has peaked. The jobless rate in California also leveled off last spring, before increasing again. Steven Levy, the director and senior economist at the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto said that we are at the end of the housing-driven recession and at the beginning of the consumer-driven recession. Levy said, “The job losses are continuing at about 10,000 a month. No way is this levelling off.”
The state survey estimates that 1.425 million people were unemployed in California in September, up 4000 over August and up nearly 400,000 from September 2007. Of the unemployed, 548,000 people were laid off and 133,800 left jobs voluntarily. September’s state-by-state comparison by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics will not be released until Tuesday.
Five categories, which included manufacturing, teaching, and health services saw a combined increase of 7200 jobs in September and nearly 99,000 from a year ago.
Unemployment claims in September were up slightly from August but were almost 10 times those of a year ago.
(This week’s tech layoffs, countrywide, are here.)
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