Health care hiring in April helped drop San Diego County’s unemployment rate to its lowest level in nearly a year.
The region’s jobless rate was 4%, down from 4.2% the previous month, state labor officials said Friday. That was lower than the 5% average for California but slightly higher than the national average of 3.9%.
San Diego County hasn’t had an unemployment rate this low since May of last year when it was 3.6%. Sluggish growth since then has been boosted in recent months by health care hiring, primarily for nursing, home health aides and ambulatory care services. As of April, more than 10,000 jobs had been added in the sector in a year.
Alan Gin, economist at the University of San Diego, said one of the big reasons for growth in health care is an aging population and the need for home health aides.
“There’s just a greater need,” he said. “As the baby boomer generation continues to retire, more and more people will need to be taken care of.”
In April, ed nurses were the most in-demand job in San Diego County with 1,939 job postings, said state data that aggregates job postings during the month. Three of five top employers, by job postings, were health care related.
The other big hiring sector from March to April was tourism, which added 2,000 jobs. Work in the industry includes positions in bars, restaurants, casinos and hotels.
Other areas that saw job increases were government (mainly state education) with 1,800; construction, with 1,600; and financial activities (real estate, insurance, investments) with 400.
Sectors that shed jobs were professional and business services (legal, scientific, waste management, architectural), down 1,000 jobs; manufacturing, down 300 jobs; and information (telecommunications, newspapers, publishing industry) and retail, both down by 100 positions.
When adjusted for seasonal swings, the San Diego County unemployment rate was closer to 4.5%, said Daniel Enemark, chief economist at the San Diego Regional Policy & Innovation Center. That compares to the 4.2% U.S. average and 5.3% in California.
San Diego County’s labor force — adults who either have a job or are actively looking for one — was 1.67 million in April, up 2.2% in a year but down 0.6% month-to-month. The labor force has fluctuated since the pandemic. There were more than 1.6 million workers in March 2020, falling to 1.5 million the next month, and for the most part, steadily rising ever since.
Enemark said one reason for the lower unemployment rate: The labor force lost about 10,000 people last month. That is, people could have just left costly San Diego County rather than fight it out in the job market and collect unemployment here, he explained.
On an annual basis, San Diego County’s biggest growing industry is private education and health services with 11,000 new jobs. In addition to nursing and health care work, it also includes work at private schools and universities. Other growing sectors were government (mainly education), with 9,500 jobs; and leisure and hospitality (tourism) with 1,700.
All other industries were down positions on an annual basis, with the biggest being manufacturing, down 4,000 jobs. Other sectors on the downswing: Professional and business services, down 3,900; retail, down 2,000; financial activities, down 1,300; information, down 1,100, and construction, down 600.
Federal job cuts have yet to show up locally, partially because severance packages see workers paid through September. There are 46,600 federal jobs, representing about 3% of San Diego County’s workforce. President Donald Trump has made reducing the size of the government’s workforce a priority through his Department of Government Efficiency.
Besides nursing with its 1,939 job postings in April, the other top positions were retail salespersons (1,830 job ads), home health and personal care aides (1,232), and fast-food and counter workers (954).
Employers with the most job ads were Apple, UC San Diego, Scripps Health, Sharp Healthcare, Qualcomm and General Atomics.
State officials do not seasonally adjust jobless rates for individual counties. Compared with other parts of California, San Diego County was in the middle of the pack with its unadjusted rate of 4%.
The rate was 5.1% in Los Angeles County, 3.7% in Orange County, 3.6% in San Francisco County, 3.8% in Santa Clara County, 6.5% in Santa Cruz County and 4.9% in Riverside County.
