Unemployment claims in California fell to their lowest levels since coronavirus-linked business shutdowns began in March, a Thursday report showed, marking a key milestone on the recovery path for the state’s feeble job market.
California workers filed 158,900 first-time unemployment claims last week, down about 17,200 from the prior week, the U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday.
The decline comes as business shutdowns ease, and the employment picture could further improve in coming weeks.
“With four Bay Area counties moving to less-restrictive tiers, that will create some job growth in the near term,” said Stephen Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.
Still, even with the decline in claims, California faces slow job growth, lagging the nation in recovering jobs lost during the pandemic. In September, the unemployment rate was 11 percent in California, far higher than the U.S. jobless rate of 7.9 percent.
Nationwide, initial unemployment claims also improved to their lowest levels since mid-March.
Jobless claims in the United States totaled 787,000 for the week ending on Oct. 17, down 55,000 from the prior week, according to the federal Labor Department.
The number of California unemployment claims are the first updated figures since the end of a two-week stretch when the Employment Development Department deliberately stopped accepting new claims as it worked to whittle away a backlog of unpaid benefits.
The number of California claims was the lowest since the week of March 21, when workers statewide filed 186,300 jobless claims, according to this news organization’s analysis of statistics released by the federal government and the EDD. That week is when widespread business shutdowns began in an attempt to combat the spread of the coronavirus.
“With the unemployment claims declining, it appears that the major layoffs may have come to an end,” Levy said.
The current number of unemployment claims represents a dramatic improvement from the week ended March 28, when California workers filed 1.06 million first-time claims, an all-time record for a single week.
During January and February, before the business shutdowns began, unemployment claims averaged 44,800 a week.
The most recent week’s claims remain more than three times greater than the pre-shutdown levels. The disparity serves as a grim reminder of how far California’s economy and job market must travel before they can be considered in recovery mode.
The Bay Area and California have proceeded at a glacial pace to dig themselves out of the economic hole created by the shutdowns.
Both the state and the nine-county Bay Area have recovered the mammoth amounts of jobs lost during March and April at a far slower pace than the United States overall.
California has recovered 38 percent of the 2.62 million jobs it lost over the two months of shutdowns, and the Bay Area has regained 33 percent of the 619,500 jobs it lost in March and April, while the United States has recovered 52 percent of the 22.16 million jobs the nation lost during those two months, this news organization’s analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports shows.
Despite the uncertainties, Michael Bernick, a former director of the EDD and an employment attorney with law firm Duane Morris, believes the shaky job markets in California and the Bay Area have begun to stabilize.
“The worst is over,” Bernick said.
