Flat February for California Unemployment, Job Totals

Aired 3/23/12 on KPBS News.

California's unemployment rate didn't budget last month - and the state's job totals aren't moving much either.

From August through December, California gained an average 32,000 jobs a month. Then came January. What was initially reported as a 5,200 job loss has now been revised into a tiny 1,500 job gain. But even that, along with February’s newly announced four-thousand job increase raises questions of whether California’s growth has stalled.

But, said Loree Levy with the state’s Employment Development Department, “there really isn’t any reason to believe that the weak job growth in January and February this year signals any fundamental change in economic conditions in California."

The state’s unemployment rate in February remained right where it was in January – at 10.9 percent. That’s the lowest it’s been in nearly three years.

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