San Diego sees healthy jobs growth

San Diego County’s unemployment rate dipped to 4.5 percent last month as hiring, most notably in the leisure industry, continued at a relatively brisk pace, state labor officials reported Friday.

While the April jobless figure is the lowest since mid-2007, once it is adjusted for seasonality, it is actually closer to 5 percent. That’s still up slightly from the 4.8 percent rate in March, but it’s almost a half percentage point lower than the year-ago rate of 5.4 percent, said San Diego economist Lynn Reaser.

The uptick in the adjusted jobless rate, though, is not necessarily a bad thing, given a net gain of 5,800 non-farm jobs in April, even as there was an increase in job seekers last month, Reaser said.

“The unemployment rate uptick was somewhat disturbing and surprising but the unemployment rate series does tend to be volatile and is influenced by ebbs and flows in the workforce,” said Reaser, chief economist of the Fermanian Business and Economic Institute at Point Loma Nazarene University. “So we created more jobs but more people entered the work force and we did not create enough jobs to accommodate all those new entrants.”

As hotels and restaurants prepare for the coming summer season, the leisure and hospitality sector accounted for a little more than half the monthly employment gain, adding some 3,300 jobs last month, the California Employment Development Department reported.

Also posting relatively robust gains was the construction industry, with 1,700 jobs, driven largely by a seasonal trend when warmer weather sets in. Specialty trade contractors accounted for 65 percent of the growth.

Even with the impressive gains posted by construction and leisure, the year-over-year job growth of 2.7 percent was widespread across multiple sectors, said economist Lynn Reaser.

“Compared with a year ago, San Diego’s job count is up by nearly 37,000,” said Reaser, chief economist of the Fermanian Business and Economic Institute at Point Loma Nazarene University. “Nearly all sectors and industries have added to their payrolls. Some of the largest gains have been in construction, engineering, health care, public education, and temporary help. The few areas where jobs have been lost include legal service, the federal government outside of defense, and publishing (except for the internet).”

Between March and April, the area with the largest employment loss was in manufacturing, with an overall cutback of 1,200 jobs.

University of San Diego economist Alan Gin said he was encouraged by the latest jobs data and for that reason is sticking with his original prediction of annual job creation of 35,000 for all of 2016.

“We’re still adding jobs at a pretty good pace,” he said. “Earlier in the year we were adding 40,000 jobs, which is higher, but 37,000 is still a solid number, so we’re seeing some pretty good results.”

San Diego County’s adjusted unemployment rate remained lower than that of the state’s, which stood at 5.3 percent for April.

California added 450,200 jobs since April 2015, outpacing the nation as a whole. Employment in California increased by 2.8 percent over the last year, compared with 1.9 percent for the U.S.

“California is seeing a broad mix of jobs, particularly in professional and business services, which are higher paying jobs,” noted Christopher Thornberg of Los Angeles-based Beacon Economics. “We even saw better numbers in manufacturing and construction. So despite all the fears of global meltdowns and housing bubbles, California remains a strong, healthy economy.”