| Unemployment tops 20% in eight California counties For many California areas, unemployment rates moved persistently higher in January, indicating that the national economic recovery hasn't yet translated into jobs for the Golden State. New county-by-county figures released by the state Wednesday showed that in eight counties,生活 more than 1 in 5 people were out of work. Moreover, Electronic whiteboardrevised numbers for last year show that fewer people were employed than was previously believed. The state was one of five, along with Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, that reached their highest unemployment rates since the government began keeping track in 1976, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. California's was 12.5% in January, up from 12.3% in December. "The unemployment rate will be persistently at this high level for at least a few more months," Electronic whiteboardsaid Esmael Adibi, an economist at Chapman University in Orange. The unemployment rate for the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metro area reached 15% in January, its highest since 1990, the earliest year for which the state has comparable data available.生活 Unemployment in Orange County reached 10.1%, up from 9.1% in December. The state's revised data for last year showing elevated unemployment indicate that a recovery could take longer than previously predicted. "The impact on the labor market was much more severe than what we had estimated," Adibi said. Most counties were still struggling under the burden of joblessness, especially the eight counties where rates were higher than 20%. Merced County, for instance, had an unemployment rate of 21.7% in January,Electronic whiteboard and Imperial County's rate was 27.3%. The national unemployment rate in January was 9.7%, 生活and the country experienced a strong 5.75% annualized increase in gross domestic product in last year's final three months. |
