California jobless rates top 11 percent

Unemployment broke the 11 percent mark in California last month, rising to a level not seen since the tail end of the Great Depression, state officials said today. The statewide unemployment rate rose to 11.2 percent in March, up from a revised 10.6 percent, the Employment Development Department said. That was the highest since January 1941, when it reached 11.7 percent. Under the standards of modern record keeping, which only goes back to 1976, the March unemployment rate was the worst, topping the 11 percent recorded three times in the early 1980s. Sacramento-area unemployment jumped to 11.3 percent, a half-point jump from the month before. That was the region's worst ever. Unemployment in Sacramento actually hit 12.9 percent in January 1983, but the geographical boundaries of the region were different then. The numbers showed the recession deepening, as 62,100 payroll jobs disappeared across the state during March. But that was only about half as bad as the record job loss from February, and state officials took some heart in that. "This was a glimmer of hope here," said chief economist Howard Roth at the state Department of Finance. "This is hopefully starting a downward trend in the number of jobs lost." The statewide unemployment rate is the fourth highest in the nation. But in terms of actual job loss, the state is doing only slightly worse than the U.S. average, said Stephen Levy, an economic consultant in Palo Alto. Levy said California's unemployment rate is being pushed up in part by a surge of new people entering the workforce. Over the past year and a half or so, more than 300,000 people have entered the state's workforce "and became instantly unemployed," said Levy. The new numbers show construction is still hurting. The Sacramento region lost 1,700 construction jobs in March, a month when the industry usually adds an average of 1,100 jobs, said EDD labor market consultant Diane Patterson. The numbers also showed that health care, which had proven resistant to the recession, is starting to sag, albeit slightly. About 100 health care jobs disappeared in Sacramento last month. Health Net Inc. and Sutter Medical Center have announced layoffs, among others. "When people are losing their jobs, they're losing their health insurance," said Joanne Spetz, a health care economist at the University of California, San Francisco.