State Posts Solid Job Numbers

California’s unemployment rate fell to 5.3 percent in April, as the state added 59,600 non-agricultural jobs to its payrolls.

That figure was essentially unchanged from March but was a 1.2 percent drop year-over-year, according to the California Employment Development Department’s monthly jobs report, which was released Friday.

Between April 2015 and last month, California businesses added 450,200 jobs not related to farming. The state has added nearly 2.2 million jobs since the recovery from the recession began in February 2010.

“It looks like a very solid report,” said Jay Prag, professor of economics and finance at the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University. “I think the one thing we have to worry about is the retailers that have been closing lately, because we [ the Inland Empire] are a retail-oriented economy in a lot of ways. We need to hope the logistics industry offsets the retail jobs we’re losing.”

The Inland Empire more or less mirrored the state in its job growth last month.

Riverside County recorded a 5.7 percent unemployment rate in April, down from a revised 6.4 percent last year. San Bernardino County’s jobless rate last month was 5.5 percent, down from a revised 6.3 percent, according to the department.

The national unemployment rate – 5.0 percent – was unchanged in April.