California Touts Job Gains for Low-Paying, Minimum Wage Jobs

According to new statistics released by the Employment Development Department (EDD) on Friday, California employment continued to improve job growth, announcing more job gains and falling unemployment figures.

Overall, California brought in 19,900 new jobs, seeing a gain of jobs for the ninth month in a row last month. Unemployment also fell for the twelfth consecutive month, with the unemployment rate settling in at 4.2% in June and 75,000 more Californians finding work.

The state has also almost completely recovered job-wise since the massive losses during March and April 2020 during the opening months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In June, California officially gained back 93.6% of nonfarm jobs lost since then, with 2,582,900 jobs back out of 2,758,900 jobs lost.

Finally, California is also continued to gain more jobs than the national average, with the state’s year-over seasonally-adjusted job increase for June increased by 850,600 (a 5.1 percent increase) compared to the U.S. annual gain of 6,282,000 jobs (a 4.3 percent increase).

However, a looming recession threatens to dampen these gains made, with warning signs already being seen with many factory and plant shutdowns causing job losses in July throughout the state. Continued company moveouts out of California are also threatening job gains.

Many analysts also note the the quality of job gains have been lower than the jobs that went out during the recession.

“California is touting job gains, and although they do give pretty solid statistics, what the jobs actually are should be worrying,” explained Ashley Spitz, an employment analyst based out of Washington D.C., to the Globe on Friday. “The majority of these jobs are low-paying, minimum wage jobs. Most don’t have much in the way of benefits and can be characterized as jobs that many Californians don’t want.”

“Part of it is that a lot of people have left these positions for jobs that benefit them better, with higher wages and benefits. This is what many are calling the great resignation. And that has led to many employers not finding people. But jobs keep coming and desperate people are taking them before something better comes. We’re already seeing very high levels of turnover.”

“California has always been resistant to major job changes to a degree. Then factory jobs saw a huge decline from the 60’s to 80’s, California got out of it switching gears to to other industries, especially tech. Great Depression? Farm jobs here abounded. Great recession? Service jobs managed to remain high to a large extent. Even now with California starting to bleed population numbers for the first time ever, jobs are still going up, especially in distribution positions and specialized services.”

“So the numbers aren’t wrong, but they are hiding the fact that quality jobs aren’t the ones coming back. I like to think of it as an airport. California was dehubbed during the recession, with many top jobs and companies pulling out, and now all the low cost carriers are coming in. We’re still busy of course, but it’s just not the same.”

“California will beat out this coming recession once again, but we need to keep an eye not on total jobs gained or lost, but what the salaries for those jobs are to get a true gauge on things.”

Statistics for July are expected in mid-to-late August and will take into account the many different factory and plant job losses that were seen this month.