How California Unemployment Changed Throughout 2021

CALIFORNIA — Though the California unemployment rate is steadily improving, it's not moving quite fast enough — the state has continuously led the country with numbers far over the national average and continued to do so in November.

The California unemployment rate in November was 6.9 percent, a .4 percent decrease from October and a 1.8 percent decrease from November 2020. The 6.9 percent rate in November was 0.4 percentage points lower than the 7.4 percent rate in October. And the 6.9 percent November rate was 1.8 percentage points lower than the 8.7 percent rate in November 2020.

But these numbers are a bit deceiving: California and Nevada topped the nation in unemployment in September, October and November. The national average unemployment rate in November was 4.2 percent, according to CalMatters.

California had still yet to recover one-third of the jobs lost in early 2020 as of November, according to data from the California Employment Development Department.

Imperial County is the county with the highest rate of unemployment at a whopping 15.5 percent, according to EDD, and Marin County has the lowest at 2.9 percent.

The trends behind these numbers have been complicated throughout the year. Early in 2021, unemployment numbers dropped quickly in part because many Californians were dropping out of the workforce altogether, CalMatters reported, meaning they weren't working and were also not actively looking for jobs.

At the same time, tons of jobs were opening up — California employers had added nearly 120,000 new jobs in the early months of 2021, according to CalMatters.

February saw an increase in labor market participation, and this continued throughout the year according to EDD releases. California led the nation in jobs added in November.

The number of people participating in the workforce is still far below pre-pandemic numbers, especially among women with small children, the Public Policy Institute of California reported.

One key reason the California job market has been lagging, according to CalMatters, is the overwhelming number of workers in the hospitality and leisure market, which has been slow to bounce back despite improved benefits. California's leisure and hospitality market has been even slower than the rest of the country's given its reliance on international travel, but other states such as Nevada and New York have shown similar trends.

Additionally, low-wage workers in high-rent ZIP codes, of which the California workforce has many, lost jobs at higher rates early on in the pandemic. The demand for this type of worker remains fairly low.

But there have still been some positive signs, such as the consistently high rate of job turnover.

Job openings and resignations were both at a historic high in October, PPIC reported. This is generally a positive sign, because it means people are optimistic about their job prospects and it forces employers to work harder to attract workers, according to PPIC.

More Californians quit their jobs in August than in 20 years, which is especially notable considering the rate had hit historic lows early in the pandemic.

No matter the rate, California unemployment numbers are trending in the right direction.