A brand new report shows the Bay Area added several thousand jobs in September, a hiring boost strong enough to account for nearly half of all job gains in California last month.
The Bay Area added 6,700 jobs in September, following a revised 1,400-job increase within the region in August, the state Department of Employment Development reported Friday.
All three major Bay Area metropolitan areas — South Bay, East Bay and the San Francisco-San Mateo region — added jobs last month.
“Good news on the jobs front,” said Steve Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “Our economy is still struggling, but lower interest rates and lower inflation should provide positive growth going forward.”
The Bay Area's rebound in September was a welcome counterpoint to the trend of lackluster job growth over the summer.
“The Bay Area job market appears to have found its second wind,” said Scott Anderson, chief U.S. economist at BMO Capital Markets. “This is a trend that we are also observing in large parts of the country.”
The San Francisco-San Mateo region added 2,800 jobs in September, 2,500 jobs within the East Bay and 200 jobs within the South Bay, in keeping with the state employment agency report. The figures have all been adjusted for seasonal fluctuations.
However, job gains in California totaled just 14,700 last month, well below the typical of twenty-two,100 jobs per thirty days the state added within the one-year period ending in September.
“This continues California’s declining job growth numbers over the past four months,” said Michael Bernick, an employment attorney on the Duane Morris law firm and former director of the state EDD.
The Bay Area accounted for nearly 46% of latest jobs added nationwide in September.
“We remain stable in the Bay Area,” said Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a San Jose-based think tank. “The long-term direction is moderately upward. This is indeed an achievement because it comes against the backdrop of downsizing in the technology sector.”
The national unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.3%, the report said.
California's unemployment rate has been trending steadily upward for greater than two years, reaching an all-time low of three.8% in August 2022.
Retailers added jobs at a brisk pace in September, which could possibly be an encouraging trend ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season, in keeping with an evaluation of Beacon Economics' EDD report.
This is in keeping with information provided to this news organization by Beacon Economics, which is predicated on its assessment of the EDD numbers. Beacon's industry numbers take seasonal volatility into consideration:
– Retailers added 1,800 jobs within the Bay Area last month. The South Bay, East Bay and San Francisco-San Mateo regions each created a whole bunch of retail jobs.
— The technology industry increased employment by a complete of 1,500 jobs. Tech firms added 1,400 jobs within the San Francisco-San Mateo region and 500 jobs within the East Bay. The technology sector reduced employment within the South Bay by a net 600 jobs.
– Hotels and restaurants have created 600 jobs within the Bay Area. Hotel and restaurant employers added 600 jobs within the East Bay and 100 jobs in Sonoma County, but additionally cut 100 jobs within the San Francisco-San Mateo metropolitan area.
— The healthcare industry cut 600 jobs in September. The East Bay suffered the most important healthcare job loss, with a net lack of 500 jobs.
The Bay Area's total gain of 8,100 jobs in August and September outweighed a lack of 200 jobs in June and a decline of 4,700 jobs in July.
But despite the fact that the Bay Area has seen two months of job growth, the region just isn’t necessarily in a strong state, warned Jeff Bellisario, executive director of the Bay Area Economic Institute.
“It was a very slow year for job growth in the Bay Area,” Bellisario said. “We would need to show a few consecutive months of significant employment gains to truly expect the economy to return to growth mode.”
What's more, the Bay Area continues to be below the record highs it reached in February 2020, the last month before government-ordered business closures were implemented to combat the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
Here you’ll be able to see how the Bay Area and its three major metropolitan regions compare to where they were shortly before the Corona-related closures:
– There are 51,300 fewer jobs within the Bay Area than in February 2020.
– There are 3,700 more jobs within the East Bay than in February 2020.
– The South Bay is missing 6,000 more jobs than before the COVID-19 crisis.
– The San Francisco-San Mateo region is the most important laggard, with a whopping job shortage of 46,000.
“The region still has a lot of catching up to do in terms of post-pandemic recovery,” Bellisario said.
Other experts imagine the Bay Area will proceed to struggle with uneven growth for a while. Despite the hype surrounding artificial intelligence, it just isn’t clear whether the fledgling AI industry will quickly produce large amounts of latest technology.
“Given our high real estate prices and the newfound ability for tech companies to spread their workforces, it is an open question whether we will see explosive growth again in our region,” Hancock said. “I think we should expect stagnant, gradual growth for the foreseeable future.”
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