State's 10.5% jobless rate is worst since '80s

Statewide, the Employment Development Department is now paying a total of $77 million a day in unemployment benefits, including $6 million from the federal stimulus package. The department is responding to increased demand for unemployment insurance benefits by hiring 400 more workers and opening its call-center phone lines from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays, starting today.

Patrick Henning, who heads the department, said that despite the “unprecedented demand,” eligible unemployed workers should receive their first benefit checks within three weeks of applying.

Other states share in California's employment woes. At least four have higher unemployment rates: Michigan, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Oregon. And more than half a dozen other large states are losing jobs at a faster pace than California, including Arizona, Nevada, Florida, Ohio and Georgia.

“Our economy is really not much worse than the U.S. average,” Kolko said. “One reason our unemployment rate is higher is that our labor force keeps growing faster than the national average, because people keep coming here because we're still a desirable place to live.”

Although most economists agree that employment will deteriorate for months to come, some see positive signs in the numbers.

Levy said the pattern of California's unemployment growth suggests that this is a cyclical downturn, with most losses related to housing and the national plunge in spending. This suggests that once the cycle turns upward, most of the state's industries will slowly begin hiring again.

“That is different from the last two downturns, where California lost jobs in major economic base sectors – aerospace in the 1990s and dot-com companies after 2000 – with many of those jobs never to return,” Levy said.

He added that long-term trends in the national and world economy, including the Obama administration's funding priorities, favor the state's strengths in technology and innovation.

“This means our future has opportunities,” Levy said.

Murtaza Baxamusa, research and policy director at the Center on Policy Initiatives, said that in San Diego County, some industries are poised to recover faster than others.

Baxamusa said the industries that have been hardest hit by the downturn – construction, which is down 29 percent from its peak in 2006, and manufacturing, down 27 percent since 2000 – could also see the earliest recoveries, partly thanks to the administration's concentration on infrastructure spending, environmental retrofitting and manufacturing of green technologies.

But Baxamusa said workers in both industries will probably require retraining in order to qualify for new positions once the economy recovers.

“As new jobs are created in construction and manufacturing, many of them will have new 'green' conditions attached to them,” Baxamusa said.

Manpower's Blair said that he is beginning to see growing demand for green technology, especially energy efficiency, and that the downward pressure on jobs overall seems to be leveling off locally after rising dramatically over the past year.

“I'm starting to see business picking up,” Blair said. “Just this week, I got an order for 100 (temporary) workers from a medical technology company.”