California’s Employment Development Department released the latest jobs report on Friday. The June report showed the state adding 73,500 jobs and the jobless rate holding steady at 7.7 percent. Unemployment is down from 14.1 percent a year ago.
The department’s former director, Michael Bernick, told KNX it's a strong job creation number, but the labor market recovery continues to be a slow one.
“We have gained over half of the jobs, more than half of the jobs lost in 2020, but we’re still down 1.2 million payroll jobs from before the pandemic,” said Bernick.
“We still have a ways to go just to get back to where we were in Feb. 2020.”
He calls the recovery “strange” when compared to the recoveries from previous recessions because many workers are reluctant to return to the job market.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, however, offered up cautious optimism.
“Before the pandemic, a 98,500-job increase was California’s largest job gain on record; since February, we’ve averaged 111,740 new jobs per month. These are promising figures that represent paychecks for Californians, but we still have a long way to go and refuse to take anything for granted,” he said in a statement.
Since February, the state has added a total of 558,700 new jobs.