Such a month-to-month decline is unusual at this time of year, port officials said. Ports usually see a pre-holiday retail season mini-bump in business in June from back-to-school products arriving from overseas. 'It's a concern. The numbers should be rising from the slow winter season all the way through to the peak holiday retail season, and they mostly aren't rising,' said Art Wong, a spokesman for the Port of Long Beach. The 12 largest North American ports received an estimated 1.06 million cargo containers carrying goods from overseas in June, according to IHS Global Insight, which tracks cargo on behalf of the National Retail Federation. That was a slight increase from the 1.04 million in import containers in May but an 18 percent drop from June 2008. 'Monthly numbers are rising as we enter the back-to-school season and will continue to do so as we build up to the holiday season, which is the cycle we see every year whether the economy is good or not,' said Jonathan Gold, vice president of the retailer group. 'The volumes are still far below what we saw last year, and it's going to stay that way until the economy begins to recover.' At the Port of Long Beach, 206,358 containers of imported goods arrived in June, down 28.4 percent from a year earlier and less than the 208,591 in May. Los Angeles recorded 281,175 import containers in June, down more than 17 percent from June 2008 and less than the 304,110 containers in May. Exports at both ports followed the same pattern. The ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles experienced weaker numbers in June than their U.S. and Canadian counterparts because the Southern California ports receive more than 40 percent of the nation's container cargo. As a result, the ports are sharing more of the nation's economic malaise than other ports, said Jack Kyser, economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. Another possible reason is fallout from the inability of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers to adopt a budget that deals with the swelling deficit, Kyser said. 'People are concerned about cuts in state programs, especially if they rely on any kind of state funding,' said Kyser, who blamed the impasse in Sacramento for further dampening confidence among consumers and businesses in California. 'State governments should be a stabilizing force during hard times,' Kyser said. 'This time around, it is a destabilizer.' 