California Unemployment Sees Very Small Drop in April to 11% (Fresno: unemployment rate, construction)

[FresnoFacts]

The April unemployment numbers came out a few days ago.
http://www.edd.ca.gov/About_EDD/pdf/urate200905.pdf

Statewide unemployment fell slightly to 11% down from 11.2% in March. In April 2008 California unemployment was 6.6%.

Overall most counties saw about the same small drop in their unemployment as the overall state numbers.

Counties with the highest unemployment rates in California during April were:
Imperial 26.9%
Colusa 19.1%
Trinity 19.1%
Sutter 18.5%
Merced 18.3%

However a few counties saw fairly large drops as seasonal hiring in tourism, agriculture, and construction began.

Some of the counties that saw larger drops in unemployment include
Fresno - 15.5% in April down from March's 17%
Merced - 18.3% down from March's 20.4%
Monterey - 11.7% in April down from March's 15.7%
Santa Cruz - 12% in April down from March's 13.6%
Tulare - 15.4% down from March's 17.7%

Since unemployment can vary drastically between cities in the same county, people should look at individual city rates here:
http://www.calmis.ca.gov/file/lfmonth/allsubs.xls

[Steve97415]

The stark fiscal realities of the proposition failures will turn that around shortly. No funding=layoffs. Unemployment will reach an all-time in California this summer.

[grapico]

Nice excel sheet, where I'm going the rate is only 5.5% Sebastopol w/ a free place to stay.

much lower than here. FL as a whole is 9.6% ... makes me feel a little better.

Santa Rosa very near is also 9.3%. Even San Fran at 8.8%.

so much for grass is greener on the other side crowd and doom and gloom crowd.

Personally with the actual level and type of jobs in the economy, I think FL is worse at 9.6% than cal is at 11% ...
anywho


I feel a little better about my move now (for anybody reading my thread in this forum). And my gf already has a job lined up there w/ just a telephone interview, after 6 months of no luck here.

With these things you always have to go down to your industry (even if unemployment is low, do they have anything you would actually do) and the very micro level. Big macro numbers are often irrelevant.

Example there have been NO jobs here in 6 months for what I do, none, ever posted, ever. I am doing something in my same industry though for much less...

Just a look at IT workers from bls... there are only 60K positions in FL, TOTAL... for the entire IT sector, there are 412K positions in California... and they make 15-20K dollars more a year on average.

A quick look on dice... I just did a search in the metro here, 61 jobs posted, SF? 3900...

So when some people yell oh no the sky is falling, others see better opportunity, and it is even worse elsewhere. Yeah i might be on the job search and living humble for awhile, but long term... probably better than crappy FL.
Good post.