IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
Unemployment in California dropped to seven percent in December, a decline of two percentage points month over month.
That’s the good news.
The not-so-good news is that the state added only 700 jobs during the last month of 2014, bringing its official job gain to more than 1.5 million
since the recession officially ended in February 2010, according to data released Friday by the California Employment Development Department.
Year-over-year, state unemployment was down 1.3 percent, California having added approximately 320,300 jobs during that time. The unemployment rate is determined by a survey of 5,500 state households conducted by the U.S. government
Nationwide, the unemployment rate in December was 5.6 percent, down from 6.7 percent in December 2013.
Unemployment fell in the Inland Empire during the past year: Riverside posted a 7.4 percent unemployment rate last month, down from 9.1 percent in December 2013.
In San Bernardino County, unemployment went from 8.7 percent to seven percent during that time, according to the data.
Five job categories – trade, transportation and utilities; financial; education-health services; leisure-hospitality and government – added 18,800 jobs between November and December of last year.
Four categories – construction, information, professional and business services and “other” services – lost 18,100 jobs during that time, while employment in the mining and logging industries was unchanged, the development department found.
