March brought “positive” job growth in Humboldt County, a local market analyst said Friday.
“I would say it was an overall positive month for the labor market,” said Randy Weaver of the Employment Development Department.
The unemployment rate improved from the revised 5.9% in February to a preliminary rate of 5.4% in March. The labor force grew and the number of those employed is up 500 jobs in March.
“There was both growth in the labor force from February to March, not much — 200 persons,” Weaver said. “But over the year, comparing this March to last March, there were 900 more people. That 61,300 people in the labor force for March is right there and among the highest labor force sizes since the beginning of the pandemic. There’s definitely more folks employed. There’s more jobs and if you look at industries, there was really only one industry that saw decline both month to month and year over and that was manufacturing.”
Areas that saw growth included the farm industry, which added 100 jobs between February and March.
But Weaver said that the increase needed to be seen in context.
“(We’re) definitely heading to the season where things are gearing up for all the seasonal industries. … It’s about the time of year when farm would see a little bump; 100 is a pretty small bump. If you look across the number for the months, it’s ranging between eight and 900. That’s a little lower than the average for the past 10 years. It’s usually been around 1,000 (or) 1,100 jobs. So even though it’s a gain, that’s still a little lower than average.”
Another area with gains was in financial activities. Asked whether that is tied to people starting to work on taxes, Weaver said it’s a possibility, not a certainty.
“Obviously (it’s) a busy season for that, but I don’t get any way to peek underneath this. So, the addition could have just been as easily somewhere else like in real estate or in commercial banking,” he said.
Across Humboldt County, Arcata has the highest unemployment rate at 8.6% — more than double many other parts of the county. Rio Dell is second highest at 5.9%
Weaver said it remains a mystery as to why Arcata’s unemployment rate remains so high. He noted that many believe it is the nature of a college town, but the pandemic disproved that when students left the area and the unemployment rate remained high.
“Arcata has some distinct districts,” he said. “And some of them, the number of people who may be living there — like I’m thinking kind of like Valley West for example — where you have a lot higher concentration of lower-income people … maybe that’s influencing it. That would be my best guess.”
The state also had a positive month: California overall gained 28,300 jobs in March, which was a big improvement from the loss of 6,600 jobs in February.
The statewide unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.3%. That was well above the record-low jobless rate of 3.8% in August 2022. Since that month, the California jobless rate has steadily worsened.
Bay Area News Group contributed to this report. Ruth Schneider can be reached at 707-441-0520.
