Jobless Rate in County Rises

Ventura County unemployment rose sharply in January as lingering effects of a national economic downturn prompted a decline in local jobs for the second straight month.

The number of local jobs had surged every month since 1996, but a January drop of 3,400 positions meant that local employers have shed 4,300 workers since November, partly because of post-Christmas layoffs, but also because of cutbacks in construction and education.

The county’s jobless rate increased from 5.0% in December to 5.4% in January, compared with 6.7% in California and 6.3% nationwide, without seasonal adjustments. That translates to 22,900 jobless workers, the highest number for the month since 1998.

“There’s a softness, and we’ll probably have another four or five weak months,” said Bill Watkins, director of the Economic Forecast Project at UC Santa Barbara.

Despite a spate of indicators that the short U.S. recession may already be over, Watkins said employment shifts traditionally trail economic trends, falling last in a downturn and reviving only after the economy is back on its feet.

He cited a new round of layoffs at Boeing in Seal Beach, which employs several local subcontractors, as a sign that the recovery is still gathering steam. “We’ve had a 14-month decline in manufacturing production [nationwide], and that’s the longest since the Depression,” he said.

Yet Watkins and Mark Schniepp of the California Economic Forecast said a resilient Ventura County economy is poised for a quick rebound. Even now, jobs are up 7,600 from a year ago.

The local economy is riding out the downturn better than the state and nation, they said, because heavy manufacturing and Internet businesses, the nation’s weakest sectors, are not big employers in the county.

Local Economy Has Many Strengths

“Ventura County is just an amazing place right now. We’re still in excellent shape,” Watkins said. “We have some real strengths, and we don’t have the weaknesses other places have.”

In particular, the county has two military bases, which aren’t going to be cutting jobs now. And it also is a worldwide center of the growing biochemical industry, led by Amgen and Baxter.

Schniepp said he sees nothing in the new report that’s alarming.

The biggest job loss--1,700 positions in retail businesses--regularly occurs in January, he said. Construction, in which 700 jobs were lost, is always slowest in the winter. And unemployment reports will be affected for months to come by the move of Kinko’s headquarters from Ventura to Texas.

“It’s a moderate to weak jobs report,” Schniepp said. “It does show the continuing malaise. There’s still some shedding that needs to occur in the technology sector. But we’re still well below the [jobless] rate of the state and nation. And I expect the second quarter to be much more buoyant.”

A developing trouble spot that could create problems for years to come is government employment, Watkins said.

The state’s projected budget deficit of at least $12.5 billion has already begun to trickle down to colleges, schools and local governments, which are beginning to block new hiring. Education jobs in the county fell by 700 last month.

“This is a multiyear problem,” Watkins said. “They’ve already stopped hiring at the universities unless they have a very good reason. And they’ll pass the pain along to local governments too.”