LOS ANGELES AND SACRAMENTO — California's unemployment rate rose for the 11th straight month in February, hitting 10.5% as a recession-racked economy shed a higher-than-expected 116,000 jobs, the state reported Friday.
The rate is up from 10.1% in January and is the highest since April 1983. All but one of 11 industries surveyed lost jobs, with construction the hardest hit. California employers have cut nearly 606,000 workers from their payrolls since February 2008, driving the state jobless rate well above the national rate of 8.1%.
The state is far from hitting bottom, analysts said. Slowing growth in Asia bodes ill for California's trade-dependent economy. And a painful wave of cuts is just beginning in the government sector, normally a reliable source of employment, as the state prepares to lay off thousands of teachers and other public servants.
The losses are slamming California's minority workers. Black unemployment -- which tops that of other racial groups in the best of times -- has reached levels not seen in decades. The average annual unemployment rate among blacks in California was 12.5% in February, compared with 7.8% for whites and 10.4% for Latinos, whose jobless rate has grown faster than that of other groups because of a heavy dependence on construction jobs. These ethnic group data are compiled as moving averages of unemployment rates from the previous 12 months.
Nationally, the picture for blacks is even worse. The overall unemployment rate for blacks in February climbed to 13.4%, while the rate for black men reached 16.3%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"Last hired, first fired" is an old adage in the African American community. Factory hands and the unskilled have long been whipsawed by the economy's downturns. Now layoffs are beginning to reach a once fast-growing cohort of black professionals, managers and government workers, including many who overcame discrimination and limited economic and educational opportunities to win quality jobs.
Jocelyn Brayton is a 40-year-old single mother with a teenage son, whose self-confidence and determination spurred her to get off welfare and work her way up through the ranks of a couple of property management firms. She was running a four-story office building in Orange when she was laid off this month.
