SACRAMENTO — California's unemployment rate climbed to a 12-year high last month as the state continued to bleed jobs in the real estate and construction industries.
The rate jumped to 7.3% in July from 7% in June. It was even worse in the Inland Empire, where the unemployment rate is approaching 9%, the state reported Friday.
"The depth and magnitude of the job losses are accelerating, clearly," said Esmael Adibi, director of economic research at Chapman University in Orange.
Adibi and other economists believe unemployment will continue rising next year even if the economy stabilizes. "Unfortunately, the unemployment rate is a lagging indicator," he said.
Once the economy improves, people who have fallen out of the job market will jump back in, which will keep the unemployment rate well into the 7% range through much of next year, he said.
That could feel like an eternity for Art Garcia, 24, of Echo Park. He's been searching for a modest-paying position for six months since losing his manager's job at the Macy's department store in the Glendale Galleria.
"I'm looking for anything at this point," he said while updating his resume at a state job center. "The only jobs available are at McDonald's, KFC or Taco Bell, but you can't survive on $8 an hour -- not with these gas prices."
Garcia is one of 1.4 million jobless Californians. "Christmas of 2008 is going to be very unpleasant," said Jack Kyser, chief economist of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.
The Golden State's unemployment rate is almost 2 full percentage points higher than the 5.4% level of July 2007 and well above last month's national rate of 5.7%, the California Employment Development Department said.
Kyser suggested that unemployment was not likely to ease until early 2010, when "we're going to be past the worst problems in the housing sector and, hopefully, international trade imports will show a little more [strength] and retail will be stabilized."
His short-term pessimism is grounded in rising unemployment and California's loss of 14,900 jobs in the last month and 75,900 in the last year. State employment totaled 15.1 million people in July.
Continuing job losses, Adibi noted, have been particularly severe among self-employed workers, whether they be high-skilled engineers or lower-paid landscapers and union construction journeymen.
