WASHINGTON — America’s employers delivered another outpouring of jobs in March, adding a sizzling 303,000 workers to their payrolls and bolstering hopes that the economy can vanquish inflation without succumbing to a recession in the face of high interest rates.

Last month’s job growth was up from a revised 270,000 in February and was far above the 200,000 jobs that economists had forecast. By any measure, it amounted to a major burst of hiring, and it reflected the economy’s ability to withstand the pressure of high borrowing costs resulting from the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes. With the nation’s consumers continuing to spend, many employers have kept hiring to meet steady customer demand.

Friday’s report from the Labor Department also showed that the unemployment rate dipped from 3.9% to 3.8%. The jobless rate has now remained below 4% for 26 straight months, the longest such streak since the 1960s. The government also revised up its estimate of job growth in January and February by a combined 22,000.

Normally, a blockbuster bounty of new jobs would raise concerns that a vibrant labor market would force companies to sharply raise pay to attract and keep workers, thereby fanning inflation pressures. But the March jobs report showed that wage growth was mild last month, which might allay any such fears. Average hourly wages were up 4.1% from a year earlier, the smallest year-over-year increase since mid-2021. From February to March, though, hourly pay did rise 0.3% after increasing 0.2% the month before.

The economy is sure to weigh on Americans’ minds as the November presidential vote nears and they assess President Joe Biden’s re-election bid. Many people still feel squeezed by the inflation surge that erupted in the spring of 2021. Eleven rate hikes by the Fed have helped send inflation tumbling from its peak. But average prices are still about 18% higher than they were in February 2021 — a fact for which Biden might pay a political price.

In a statement Friday, though, Biden argued that the economy’s strong performance means that his policies are paying off.

“My plan is growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up, investing in all Americans and giving the middle class a fair shot,” he said. “Inflation has come down significantly. We’ve come a long way, but I won’t stop fighting for hard-working families.”

The 303,000 jobs that the economy added in March were the largest gain since last May. And they boosted average monthly job growth so far this year to a vigorous 276,000, an improvement even on 2023’s robust average of 251,000.

The unemployment rate fell last month even though a sizable 469,000 people entered the labor force looking for work. That influx increased the proportion of Americans who either have a job or are looking for one from 62.5% in February to 62.7%. A bigger labor force tends to ease pressure on companies to significantly raise wages, thereby slowing inflation pressures.

Though most industries added jobs last month, hiring was mainly concentrated in three categories: Healthcare and private education, leisure and hospitality and government accounted for nearly 69% of the hiring. In addition, construction companies added a solid 39,000 jobs.

Four years after the pandemic curbed travel and forced shutdowns of restaurants, bars and entertainment venues, those industries have finally regained their pre-pandemic employment level, with a category that includes such businesses adding 49,000 jobs in March.

The Fed’s policymakers are tracking the state of the economy, the job market and inflation to determine when to begin cutting interest rates from their multi-decade highs. Rate cuts by the Fed would likely lead, over time, to lower borrowing rates across the economy.

The central bank’s policymakers started raising rates two years ago to try to tame inflation, which by mid-2022 was running at a four-decade high. Those rate hikes — 11 of them from March 2022 through July 2023 — helped drastically slow inflation. Consumer prices were up 3.2% in February from a year earlier, far below a peak of 9.1% in June 2022.

The much higher borrowing costs for individuals and companies that resulted from the Fed’s rate hikes were widely expected to trigger a recession, with waves of layoffs and a painful rise in unemployment. Yet to the surprise of just about everyone, the economy has kept growing steadily and employers have kept hiring at a healthy pace.

Some economists believe that a rise in productivity — the amount of output that workers produce per hour — made it easier for companies to hire, raise pay and post bigger profits without having to raise prices. In addition, an influx of immigrants into the job market is believed to have addressed labor shortages and slowed upward pressure on wage growth. This helped cool inflation even as the economy kept growing.

“This report is like the macroeconomist’s Holy Grail,’’ said Julia Pollak, chief economist at the online job marketplace ZipRecruiter. “It’s pointing toward noninflationary growth.”

Noting the strong job growth, influx of new workers, declining unemployment and slowing wage growth, Pollak said, “It suggests that the Fed can walk and chew gum at the same time, bringing down inflation without crippling the labor market.”

In the meantime, the Fed has signaled that it expects to cut rates three times this year. But it is awaiting more inflation data to gain further confidence that annual price increases are heading toward its 2% target. Some economists have begun to question whether the Fed will need to cut rates anytime soon in light of the consistently durable U.S. economy.

The still-strong demand for labor has meant that some employers are still struggling to fill vacancies. One of them is John Zmuda, president of Moseys Production Machinists in Anaheim, California, who said it’s still “extremely hard’’ to find workers.

Though he receives plenty of resumes, Zmuda said “it seems like most people are just wage-hunting” rather than seeking a long-term career.

Moseys, a family-owned company that supplies the defense, aerospace, healthcare industries, wants to add three or four workers to a staff of 27. Zmuda said he has raised wages 10% over the past year or so. But California’s high cost of living, especially for housing, puts off some potential recruits.

Like many manufacturers, Moseys depends heavily on robots. But for an employer, automation goes only so far.

“People bring to the table their minds and eyes,” Zmuda said. “Robots do not. People will think before they do something.’’

Likewise, in Duncan, Oklahoma, Southern Machine Works, which also supplies the aerospace and defense industries, needs four or five machinists.

“It’s really been a struggle to find anyone,’’ said Frank Burch, CEO of the third-generation family firm.

Attracting recruits to a rural town of 23,000 is difficult, especially when the oil-field-services giant Halliburton is nearby and seeking workers, too.

“We’re just hiring individuals that seem to have the mental capacity to learn the business, and then we’re teaching them through our in-house training program,” Burch said.

Employers, he suggested, will probably have to get used to tighter labor markets:

“When you look at the demographics of the country – the baby boom’s gone, the current generation just isn’t having children. I just don’t really see it changing in my lifetime.”

AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.

Amazon.com’s cloud division is cutting hundreds of jobs that will affect sales and marketing employees and the team developing technology for brick-and-mortar stores.

“We’ve identified a few targeted areas of the organization we need to streamline in order to continue focusing our efforts on the key strategic areas that we believe will deliver maximum impact,” an Amazon Web Services spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday. Amazon will try to find new roles for affected employees, he said.

Sales growth at AWS, the largest seller of rented computing power and data storage, slowed to a record low last year as corporate customers cut spending and delayed technology modernization projects.

The latest layoffs come about a year after AWS held its largest-ever round of job eliminations, part of a cost-cutting drive that saw Amazon slash 27,000 corporate roles following a pandemic-era hiring boom.

The terminations have continued after those mass layoffs, in recent months falling on the teams behind the voice-activated Alexa assistant, Prime Video and music division, and health care initiatives. Twitch, the company’s internet video streaming subsidiary, also eliminated jobs.

The cuts to Amazon’s stores technology team come the same week that the company confirmed that it would be removing the Just Walk Out cashierless shopping system from Amazon Fresh grocery stores in the US, replacing it with an automated grocery cart.

It took the Golden State a few months to take the lead, but we finally did it: as of February 2024, California finally caught up with Nevada and we are now the U.S. state with the highest unemployment rate at 5.3%. This is not a typical scenario, and you have to look back to the dividends of the end of the cold war or the Coronavirus shutdown when our home state carried that distinction. Other states with high unemployment rates include Washington on the West Coast, Connecticut and New Jersey on the East Coast, and Illinois in between. Which states are at the other end? North Dakota at 2.0% and South Dakota at 2.1%.

The national unemployment rate stands at 3.9%, substantially lower than California’s. However, the 1.4% gap between the national and state rate is in line with historical averages, meaning that while it is unusual to find California as the leader of the pack, it is quite common to place it in the top three or so. This may be attributed in part to differences in industrial composition between the economies and socio-economic factors. Ignore differences in seasonal factors since the data we focus on is reported with typical seasonal fluctuations filtered out.

Unemployment rates also vary widely across the state. Of the 58 counties within California, the highest unemployment rates are in Colusa County (20.4%) and Imperial County (17.2%), the latter typically having the highest rate among the regions of the country. Both Riverside County and San Bernardino County, which make up the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario Metropolitan Statistical Area or the Inland Empire, are in the middle of the pack in 22nd and 20th place with rates of 5.6% and 5.4%, respectively. These rates are higher than a year ago.

So, how bad is bad? Ranking states and regions from top to bottom is interesting, especially since it typically results in political statements that focus on such extremes. However, from an economic point of view, it is more important to understand the “why” not the “what.”

Unemployment rates are determined by dividing the number of unemployed persons by the labor force, which is made up of both the employed and unemployed.  The unemployment rate falls if employment growth is positive as long as the labor force does not grow. In fact, it will fall as long as employment growth outpaces the labor force growth. On the other hand, the unemployment rate will go up even if employment does not fall or even grows, as long as the labor force increases by more. In general, employment growth outpacing labor force growth is a sign of a relatively healthy economy,  but when both the labor force and employment shrink, the economy is slowing or contracting, even if the unemployment rate falls. This is not healthy. In California’s case, recent weak employment growth stands out.

Let’s look at the Inland Empire.

At 5.5%, the unemployment rate for the Inland Empire is up by 1.1 percentage points from February 2023. It is also 1.6 percentage points higher than in February 2020 (3.9%), the month preceding the start of the pandemic. That does not sound good, but the explanation is that our labor force increased by 65,000 people – perhaps because more discouraged workers have decided to look for work again or because of outmigration from the coastal areas – while employment is 27,000 workers higher. Taken together, these figures paint a picture of a growing economy even as the unemployment rate has increased. Moreover, employment increased despite the recent and highly publicized job losses in the logistics (transportation, warehousing, wholesale) sector, meaning that growth in other sectors is offsetting the momentum lost as the logistics sector slows.

The story is different elsewhere in Southern California.

Los Angeles County has the worst record. It experienced a large employment decline of 6%. Had the labor force not shrunk by roughly the same amount (5%), then the unemployment rate of Los Angeles County would have increased by that number, and would now stand at 11.3% instead of the seemingly normal 5.0%. It was “saved” by a combination of outmigration and people quitting the labor force. Orange County and Ventura County did slightly better but also ended up with lower employment and a shrinking labor force.

So what is the situation in California?

The labor force is still 1% below its February 2020 level while employment is 2% lower than its pre-pandemic level. In absolute numbers, employment is lower by 410,000 and the labor force is 243,000 or close to a quarter of a million smaller compared to just before the pandemic. California’s unemployment rate is 5.3% now, compared to  4.4% in February 2020. Like Los Angeles County, the state’s labor market has been adversely affected in recent years by a shrinking labor force, due to people retiring or otherwise leaving the labor force, and outmigration, as reflected in population numbers of the past few years.

What do we make of all of this?

Neither the state nor coastal Southern California have fully recovered from the pandemic, but the Inland Empire has. Employment across the state and its regions should pick up this year as leading sectors such as logistics, tech, and entertainment experience employment growth. And let’s face it, neither one of us is going to move to South Dakota, just because you can tour the Badlands and visit Mount Rushmore every weekend. Last time one of us considered visiting there, he could not find a four-star hotel in the capital (we challenge you to remember the name — no cheating, do not google it; and no, it is not Bismarck).

Meanwhile, having recovered all employment lost since the start of the COVID-19 downturn, and showing a growing labor force, the Inland Empire is doing relatively well. While its unemployment rate is elevated, this is simply a function of more people moving into our region and not all, so far, being able to find a job.

Manfred W. Keil: Chief Economist, Inland Empire Economic Partnership and Associate Director, Lowe Institute of Political Economy, Robert Day School of Economics and Finance, Claremont McKenna College

Robert Kleinhenz: Cal State Long Beach, CEO, Kleinhenz Economics.

The Inland Empire Economic Partnership’s mission is to help create a regional voice for business and quality of life in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Its membership includes organizations in the private and public sector.

LIVERMORE, Calif. — Most fast food workers in California will be paid at least $20 an hour beginning Monday when a new law is scheduled to kick in giving more financial security to an historically low-paying profession while threatening to raise prices in a state already known for its high cost of living.

Democrats in the state Legislature passed the law last year in part as an acknowledgement that many of the more than 500,000 people who work in fast food restaurants are not teenagers earning some spending money, but adults working to support their families.

MORE MINIMUM WAGE: Confusion reigns: Which fast food workers will get paid more in California?

That includes immigrants like Ingrid Vilorio, who said she started working at a McDonald’s shortly after arriving in the United States in 2019. Fast food was her full-time job until last year. Now, she works about eight hours per week at a Jack in the Box while working other jobs.

“The $20 raise is great. I wish this would have come sooner,” Vilorio said through a translator. “Because I would not have been looking for so many other jobs in different places.”

The law was supported by the trade association representing fast food franchise owners. But since it passed, many franchise owners have bemoaned the impact the law is having on them, especially during California’s slowing economy.

Alex Johnson owns 10 Auntie Anne’s Pretzels and Cinnabon restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area. He said sales have slowed in 2024, prompting him to lay off his office staff and rely on his parents to help with payroll and human resources.

Increasing his employees’ wages will cost Johnson about $470,000 each year. He will have to raise prices anywhere from 5% to 15% at his stores, and is no longer hiring or seeking to open new locations in California, he said.

“I try to do right by my employees. I pay them as much as I can. But this law is really hitting our operations hard,” Johnson said.

“I have to consider selling and even closing my business,” he said. “The profit margin has become too slim when you factor in all the other expenses that are also going up.”

Over the past decade, California has doubled its minimum wage for most workers to $16 per hour. A big concern over that time was whether the increase would cause some workers to lose their jobs as employers’ expenses increased.

Instead, data showed wages went up and employment did not fall, said Michael Reich, a labor economics professor at the University of California-Berkeley.

“I was surprised at how little, or how difficult it was to find disemployment effects. If anything, we find positive employment effects,” Reich said.

Plus, Reich said while the statewide minimum wage is $16 per hour, many of the state’s larger cities have their own minimum wage laws setting the rate higher than that. For many fast food restaurants, this means the jump to $20 per hour will be smaller.

The law reflected a carefully crafted compromise between the fast food industry and labor unions, which had been fighting over wages, benefits and legal liabilities for close to two years. The law originated during private negotiations between unions and the industry, including the unusual step of signing confidentiality agreements.

The law applies to restaurants offering limited or no table service and which are part of a national chain with at least 60 establishments nationwide. Restaurants operating inside a grocery establishment are exempt, as are restaurants producing and selling bread as a stand-alone menu item.

At first, it appeared the bread exemption applied to Panera Bread restaurants. Bloomberg News reported the change would benefit Greg Flynn, a wealthy campaign donor to Newsom. But the Newsom administration said the wage increase law does apply to Panera Bread because the restaurant does not make dough on-site. Also, Flynn has announced he would pay his workers at least $20 per hour.

Beam reported from Sacramento.

California’s 5.3% unemployment in February was the highest rate in the nation.

My trusty spreadsheet, looking at labor stats dating to 1976, could find only 11 other months the state reached this dubious ranking. Look to the early 1990s economic malaise (August to December 1994) and the coronavirus chill (March to August 2021).

That’s on top of our previous mention in this space that 2023 was the first year since 1994 that the state ranked dead last in the nation for job growth on a percentage-point basis.

To be fair, California historically has been the nation’s leading job creator. At the same time, it’s a reasonable bet that in any given month California will be high on the joblessness scorecard.

Consider that California unemployment has ranked second-highest amongst the states in 72 months over 48 years. It was third 52 times, fourth 35 times, and fifth 49 times.

So an average month since 1976 has seen California unemployment ranked No. 10 among the states. Only five places fared worse – Alaska, the District of Columbia, West Virginia, Mississippi, and Michigan.

And by the way, here’s another example of California’s persistent high joblessness: Its best month in the unemployment rankings since 1976 was 29th best in October 1987.

Yes, the best ranking was a paltry 29th place.

Why so high?

California has heavy concentrations of workers in businesses with big seasonal swings – hospitality, agriculture, and retail. Other economically volatile industries, major employers in California, include technology, real estate, and entertainment.

Additionally, California’s celebrated entrepreneurial grit has a downside – that risk-taking creates a higher-than-average failure rate. That can also boost unemployment.

Consider a yardstick for chronic high unemployment from my spreadsheet: How often during the past 48 years has a state’s monthly jobless rate ranked among the nation’s 10 highest?

This is not a Top 10 list to be envied.

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By this measure, California ranked in the Top 10 in 63% of the months since 1976. Just four others ranked more frequently: Alaska at 78%, DC at 69%, Michigan at 66%, and West Virginia at 63%.

Please note that California’s economic rivals were in the middle of the pack: Texas was No. 21 at 17% and Florida was 24th at 15%.

It’s worth noting that 12 states never made the Top 10 – Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia, a diverse mix economically and politically.

Bottom line

It’s hard to sugarcoat California’s high unemployment in February.

Look, California’s astronomically lofty cost of living nudges folks with solid finances to think about relocating – no less those who are missing a paycheck.

But let’s mention that the state’s chronically high joblessness during the past half-century came as California created more jobs than any other state since 1976.

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That’s 9.7 million new jobs – 13% of all US hires. Even California’s job growth rate of 119% topped the 92% employment expansion in the rest of the nation.

Not to dismiss the pain of joblessness, but that top-of-the-nation 5.3% February rate is historically low. California has averaged 7.2% unemployment since 1976.

These stats suggest California employers have enjoyed the deep supply of job candidates that unemployment can create.

These same figures also indicate that California workers, if nothing else, have been very flexible.

PS: Ponder Nebraska, where the average monthly jobless ranking since 1976 is No. 48. That’s the lowest among the states. But Nebraska employers added just 477,000 workers over the 48 years – 95% less than California’s hirings.

Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at jlansner@scng.com

Here’s more evidence of Southern California’s cooling economy: February’s hiring pace was 16% below the region’s pre-pandemic hiring pace.

My trusty spreadsheet, filled with state job figures released March 22, found 7.93 million at work in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties in February. This data is not adjusted for seasonal swings.

So, employment is up 40,600 in a month. It’s a nice reversal from January’s 151,400 loss of employees as job counts typically drop to start a year. Yet February’s increase was below the 48,200 average hires for a February in 2015-19.

Over 12 months, Southern California bosses added 55,400 positions. However, that year’s job growth of 0.7% is below the previous 12 month’s 1% increase and the 2.2%-a-year average hiring pace in 2015-19.

Still, the hiring translated to decreased regional joblessness.

The four-county unemployment rate was 4.9% in February, compared with 5.3% in the previous month, but it’s above the 4.5% from a year earlier. Joblessness averaged 4.7% in pre-pandemic 2015-19.

The 440,600 counted as officially out of work was down 41,600 in a month – but up 32,600 in a year. The jobless count is 4% above the 424,700 average of pre-pandemic 2015-19.

California’s unemployment rate for February 5.3%, seasonally adjusted, was the highest since December 2021 and tops among the states.

Regional differences

Here’s how Southern California’s job market performed in the region’s key metropolitan areas …

Los Angeles County: 4.55 million workers, after adding 27,700 in a month and growing by 9,400 in a year. Hiring averaged 34,800 for the month in 2015-19. Unemployment? 5% vs. 5.9% a month earlier; 4.8% a year ago; and 5.2% average in 2015-19.

Orange County: 1.69 million workers, after adding 10,400 in a month and growing by 24,100 in a year. Hiring averaged 11,100 for the month in 2015-19. Unemployment? 4.2% – same as a month earlier vs. 3.3% a year ago; and 3.6% average in 2015-19.

Inland Empire: 1.69 million workers, after adding 2,500 in a month and growing by 21,900 in a year. Hiring averaged 2,300 for the month in 2015-19. Unemployment? 5.5% – same as a month earlier vs. 4.4% a year ago; and 5.2% average in 2015-19.

Industry swings

Job changes in key Southern California business sectors, ranked by one-month change …

Education/health: 1.52 million workers – up 20,600 in a month and up 82,300 in a year.

Leisure/hospitality: 940,700 workers – up 10,000 in a month and up 9,500 in a year.

Information: 219,200 workers – up 6,600 in a month but down 37,500 in a year.

Professional-business services: 1.13 million workers – up 5,700 in a month but down 18,700 in a year.

Government: 1.03 million workers – up 5,400 in a month and up 27,800 in a year.

Construction: 368,800 workers – up 900 in a month and up 4,700 in a year.

Financial: 357,700 workers – up 400 in a month but down 3,800 in a year.

Manufacturing: 568,100 workers – down 300 in a month and down 9,100 in a year.

Transport-Warehouse-Utility: 682,500 workers – down 6,300 in a month and down 1,500 in a year.

Retailing: 726,900 workers – down 6,900 in a month and down 3,200 in a year.

Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at jlansner@scng.com

Once a year, at the beginning of March, the national release of the monthly labor market data coincides with that of the state and the region. This is due to major annual data revisions for the January report on the sub-national level. The numbers released on March 8 by the Employment Development Department are for January 2024, while the U.S. Department of Labor published the February 2024 data. The February 2024 report for the sub-national level will be released in the middle of March.

We can get the national analysis out of the way: There was a higher than expected increase in the employment numbers (275,000) while the even higher initially released January numbers were revised downwards to more reasonable levels (229,000). Yes, the unemployment rate did increase from 3.7% to 3.9%, but that was due to healthy employment growth being outpaced by an even larger increase in the labor force.

Since then, the inflation numbers have also been published, and while they did not improve further and by the magnitude we’d hoped for, the U.S. economy continues to be on a path for a soft landing (reducing inflation rates to 2% without creating a recession).

This is important, because the Federal Reserve would be less likely to lower interest rates during summer if the job market was as hot as initially estimated and inflation remains sticky above the 2% target. The central bank left interest rates unchanged after its meeting last week, but indicated it is close to start lowering the interest rates as policy makers become confident that “it will be appropriate to dial back.” Chairman Jerome Powell said they were “not far from it.” As the UCLA Anderson Forecast put it in its most recent report, we are on a path to normalcy.

Now let us focus on our state and region. For the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario Metropolitan Statistical Area, some of the annual revisions were substantial. In the Inland Empire, the Logistics industry lost significantly more jobs (some 5,000 depending on which month you focus on) since last summer than originally assumed and shows a steeper downward trend. On the other hand, Education and Health Services has gained more jobs than previously thought, roughly 10,000 more and the numbers are trending upward, confirming it as the sector with the largest share of labor in the Inland Empire.

The headline news for the Inland Empire is that the unemployment rate jumped up by half percentage points, increasing significantly from 5.0% to 5.5%. Since the Inland Empire’s economy is often described as “first in, last out,” shall we take this as the first sign of the national economy tanking after all, resulting in a “hard landing” (decrease in inflation coinciding with a recession)?

The initially bleak picture is simply an artifact of the data, generated by regularly occurring seasonal patterns. Without getting too technical, we will try to convince you that you should look at seasonally adjusted data rather than the raw data from the EDD. While for some months the difference is negligible, in January it is particularly high, since there are layoffs every year due to the post-holiday season. It is not surprising that the largest raw data (non-seasonally adjusted) employment losses for the Inland Empire came in Retail Trade, Logistics, and Leisure and Hospitality. Filtering out these effects is important since they give a misleading picture of the underlying economy. Total employment reported did not go down 32,300 (which would represent an alarming 2%); instead, it went up by 4,850.

The increase in employment reported by households (+9,100) aligned with the increase in establishment employment (+4,850). Residency measured employment increased by more than what establishments reported. This is probably due to commuters, most of whom work in the coastal areas. The employment status of these commuters is reported by households in the region, not by establishments. This means that significant job growth among commuters could explain the difference for January.

Let us get more specific. Compared to the bleak picture painted by the raw establishment data (decreases of -8,200 in Retail Trade, -7,400 in Logistics, -6,500 in Professional and Business Services, and -3,700 in Leisure and Hospitality), the numbers we get after accounting for seasonal patterns are more positive. The biggest decrease was seen in Professional and Business Services (almost -1,200), at only roughly a fifth of what non-seasonally adjusted data indicated. For Retail Trade (-500), Logistics (+250), and Leisure and Hospitality (-700) numbers also look less worrisome. Bottom line: Do not make major decisions based on non-seasonally adjusted data.

Applying standard statistical techniques to remove seasonal regularities results in the (seasonally adjusted) unemployment rate actually falling by 0.1 percentage points from 5.7% to 5.6% in the Inland Empire.

The change came in the healthiest way possible: through a simultaneous increase in employment and labor force, the former outpacing the latter (+9,100 and +6,200, respectively). After six consecutive months of increases in the civilian unemployment rate, this is encouraging. The result holds despite the fact we only observed significant employment increases during three months in 2023.

The Inland Empire will need more time to recover from the very concerning decreases of 12,800 for the labor force and 13,600 for employment observed between November and December. Despite this, the Inland Empire continues to be the poster child of the economic recovery from the COVID-19 recession,. While we will continue to see some structural adjustment between the industries of the region, we are on a positive path as far as the economy is concerned.

Manfred W. Keil is chief economist, Inland Empire Economic Partnership and Associate Director, Lowe Institute of Political Economy, Robert Day School of Economics and Finance, Claremont McKenna College; Ivan Kolesnikov: Junior Student Manager, Lowe Institute of Political Economy.

The Inland Empire Economic Partnership’s mission is to help create a regional voice for business and quality of life in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Its membership includes organizations in the private and public sector.

SpaceX and Blue Origin LLC are competing to launch satellites and take humans to the moon. They are also paying big salaries to hire so many young and tireless engineers that old-line aerospace employers like Boeing Co. and NASA are finding it harder to fill positions.

Most aerospace students really covet jobs at SpaceX and Blue Origin, recruiters say. The private firms are run by two of the three richest men in the world, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who ultimately imagine people living and working in Earth’s orbit and on the surface of Mars.

Their private firms also often pay more than established space operations. SpaceX is currently listing starting aerospace engineer positions at $95,000 to $115,000 a year.

NASA, which follows the federal government’s General Schedule pay scales, offers starting salaries along a range that starts at $54,557 for engineers with bachelor’s degrees, $66,731 for master’s degrees and $73,038 for doctorates at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Helping SpaceX or Blue Origin build towering rockets, orbiting labs or moon landers can also mean serving at the whims of mercurial executives. California has accused SpaceX of routinely underpaying women and minority workers. And jobs at the startups can mean laboring on projects that never see the light of day or sitting at a cubicle for 80 or 90 hours a week.

“You’re doing this cool thing,” said Griffin Rahn, who is earning his aerospace master’s degree at Georgia Tech. “You’re also going to be like really worked to death.”

Nonetheless, graduates from elite colleges have been jumping at the chance to contribute to the ambitious plans of the startups, and each company is hiring rapidly. Blue Origin, with more than 10,000 workers, had more than 1,500 job postings in mid-March. SpaceX is estimated to have more than 11,000 workers and had over 1,100 openings.

This has intensified recruiting drives for aerospace majors at colleges like the Georgia Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Michigan.

William Putaansuu, an aerospace engineering undergraduate at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Blue Origin and SpaceX “know people want to go work for them.”

The sharp growth of space projects mean aerospace engineer jobs are projected to grow 6% from 2022 to 2032, twice as fast as the average overall U.S. job growth rate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Over the next five years, the booming global space economy is expected to grow roughly 40% to some $770 billion.

“Twenty years ago, you would not have characterized the space business as fast moving,” said Daniel Hastings, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. The speed is “what attracts the younger people these days.”

The sharp differences between the space startups and old-school operations can also be seen in their different college recruiting strategies. Established firms with government space contracts, like Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp. set up booths at career fairs to explain their programs and benefits. SpaceX and Blue Origin recruiters go right to campus robotics teams or rocket clubs.

Rahn, who interned at NASA with the Jacob’s Space Exploration Group, said that his interview there focused on his resume to determine his qualifications and the questions were more personality based.

His interviews at Blue Origin and Relativity Space Inc. went through multiple rounds, mostly filled with technical questions with the goal of learning what they will “get out of you if they hire you,” he said.

Students say they know that the demands at the private space firms can take its toll on mental and physical health. This often prompts workers to take another look at more established space operations.

The turnover rate at SpaceX and Blue Origin “is insanely high,” Putaansuu said. “Not because they don’t necessarily like working for that company, but there are so many offers out there.”

Spokespeople for SpaceX and Blue Origin did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Burned out

Ann Richmond, deputy director of talent services at NASA, said that as private sector space companies grow, NASA has “a little bit of a tougher time competing with them salary-wise,” though she and recruiters for firms like Boeing say they offer employees a better work-life balance.

Richmond said that people who have come to NASA after working for private firms “shared that they felt a little burnout.”

She added that NASA’s federal retirement and health benefits as well as opportunities for promotion draw employees who are “playing the long game.”

“We see some very savvy applicants that are really looking at the total compensation package,” Richmond said.

NASA views space startups as partners and wants to benefit from their efforts and experiences. “It’s more and more common that we have people moving back and forth between NASA and SpaceX and NASA and Blue Origin,” Richmond said.

Boeing also pitches young engineers on a more stable work-life balance. Beyond its besieged commercial aircraft division, the company can offer career paths spanning a range of other high-profile programs, from fighter jets to missiles to spacecraft. Recent graduates joining Boeing can work on products currently in use, rather than futuristic ideas locked in long and potentially dead-end development cycles.

While NASA and its contractors don’t have the same buzz that Blue Origin and SpaceX do, they do have storied histories stretching back 65 years that include some of humankind’s greatest achievements in space.

But many aerospace majors remain more drawn to buzz than benefits and legacies.

“I think a lot of people when they’re looking for jobs, they’re not nearly focused enough on what an actual position is,” Rahn said. “They’re much more worried about the place that they’re at.”

©2024 Bloomberg News. Visit at bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The usual start-of-the-year drop in Southern California real estate jobs this year was 14% larger than the norm.

My trusty spreadsheet found property-linked employment in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties was 754,500 in January 2024 – off 12,700 for the month. It’s largely a seasonal dip.

In pre-pandemic 2015-19, an average 11,120 jobs were cut in January. Note that many people who work in the real estate world are self-employed and not tracked by traditional government job counts.

However, real estate work in the last 12 months grew locally by 13,000 positions – a 1.8% increase. But that trails the 14,000-a-year hiring pace since the Great Recession ended.

Real estate’s big employer, construction, cut 9,900 workers in the month but was up 14,000 over 12 months, or a 4% gain.

Across Southern California, employment in all other industries was 7.15 million workers – off 114,500 jobs in a month. Over 12 months, non-real estate jobs are up 63,400, or a 0.9% gain.

Don’t overlook real estate’s job-market clout. Since 2010, these real-estate linked workers have equaled 9.7% of all Southern California jobs and 11.2% of local hiring.

By the slice

Here’s how key real estate-related employment niches in Southern California fared …

Trade construction specialists: 248,400 employed by contractors – off 7,200 for the month but up 11,300 over 12 months, or a 4.8% gain. Average January in 2015-19 had 5,880 job loss.

Building/civil/construction: 119,500 workers in various trades – off 2,700 for the month but up 2,700 over 12 months, or a 2.3% gain. Average January had 1,580 job loss.

Lending: 88,700 folks in various slices of credit work – flat for the month and off 4,400 over 12 months, or a 4.7% drop. Average January had 560 job loss. This niche remains 3,200 jobs below pre-pandemic levels.

Real estate services: 140,200 people handling transactions – off 1,400 for the month but up 2,100 over 12 months, or a 1.5% gain. Average January had 2,380 job loss.

Building supplies: 51,400 sellers of equipment and materials – off 600 for the month but up 100 over 12 months, or a 0.2% gain. Average January had 220 job loss.

Building services: 106,300 jobs in commercial property operations – off 800 for the month but up 1,200 over 12 months, or a 1.1% gain. Average January 2024 had 500 job loss.

Geographically speaking

Here is real estate employment’s breakdown, by metro area …

Los Angeles County: 360,400 real estate jobs – off 5,600 for the month but up 1,700 over 12 months, or a 0.5% one-year gain. An average January in 2015-19 had 5,120 cuts. Property jobs equal 7.9% of all LA workers in January.

Orange County: 213,900 real estate jobs – off 3,200 for the month but up 3,300 over 12 months, or a 1.6% one-year gain. An average January in had 2,960 cuts. Property jobs equal 12.7% of all OC workers.

Inland Empire: 180,200 real estate jobs – off 3,900 for the month but up 8,000 over 12 months, or a 4.6% one-year gain. An average January had 3,040 cuts. Property jobs equal 10.7% of all IE workers.

Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at jlansner@scng.com

A few readers thought I was a tad harsh in a recent column that noted California had the nation’s slowest job growth in 2023.

Yes, adding any number of jobs isn’t bad – but 154,000 new workers equals only 0.9% growth in a hot US job market that grew 2%. That hiring pace – as measured on a percentage-point basis – ranked No. 51 among the states and the District of Columbia.

We often forget that California is by far the nation’s largest job market with 17.8 million workers. My trusty spreadsheet tells me the Golden State has ranked No. 1 since 1972. The second-biggest job market in the US is Texas at 13.9 million workers. Florida is No. 3 at 9.7 million.

But my readers’ argument that California’s size would make it hard to be among the fastest growing on a percentage-point basis is a stretch. Texas (3.3% more jobs in 2023) and Florida (up 3.4%) ranked in 2023’s top three for percentage growth along with Nevada (up 3.4%).

Look, there are various ways to measure economic progress.

Remember, percentage-point growth shows us the relative scale of hiring trends on the overall California job market as well as against other states. Still, let’s look at California ranked by the number of new jobs created – not the 2023 percentage gain.

My trusty spreadsheet tells me that those 154,000 California hires last year were topped by only three states – Texas (449,600), Florida (316,600), and New York (195,000).

However, California having lofty spots on this kind of job-creation scorecard is nothing newsy. California ranked No. 1 or No. 2 for total new jobs in 11 of the past 12 years (let’s forget coronavirus-chilled 2020’s last-place finish).

And historically speaking, over the past 52 years as the largest job market, California’s count of new workers led the nation 27 times and ranked second 10 times.

Or look how modest last year’s hiring was this way: 154,000 new jobs was 27% below California’s average year since 1972.

High rankings often equal high expectations. And in 2023, California’s job market missed its high bar.

Locally speaking

Where were those 154,000 California jobs created last year? Largely to the south, when looking at state data tracking 29 employment hubs …

1. San Diego: 21,000 new jobs bringing its total to 1.56 million (California’s No. 4 employment center).

2. Inland Empire: 19,800 jobs added to 1.69 million (No. 3).

3. Sacramento: 18,200 jobs added to 1.09 million (No. 8).

4. Orange County: 17,000 jobs added to 1.7 million (No. 2).

5. Los Angeles: 13,400 jobs added to 4.59 million (No. 1).

6. Oakland: 10,300 jobs added to 1.2 million (No. 5).

7. Fresno: 8,500 jobs added to 392,900 (No. 9).

8. San Jose: 4,200 jobs added to 1.16 million (No. 7).

9. Bakersfield: 4,200 jobs added to 294,000 (No. 11).

10. Modesto: 3,500 jobs added to 194,600 (No. 14).

And there was a clear last place – San Francisco. It lost 11,400 jobs last year, shrinking to 1.17 million, the state’s No. 6 job market. It was the only job losers among 29 markets tracked.

By the way, if you’re looking for top job growth on a percentage basis, tiny El Centro led California in 2023 with 3.2% more workers. But that’s only 1,800 new jobs, bringing the agriculture-rich border town’s employment to 59,000.