Month of May Finds Reduced Unemployment Rate in Silicon Valley

Fluctuations in the rate of unemployment causes a flutter in the number of delinquencies in a region –  experts say. That follows any reduction in unemployment rate is a welcome news to the real estate sector and ultimately to foreclosure reduction. Santa Clara County, it is reported, posted its lowest unemployment rate during May, but the figure of 11 percent causes concern to the 100,600 unemployed people in the SF Bay region.

The state Employment Development Department informs that the unemployment rate slightly slid down from a revised 11.4 percent in April – the peak was in January at 12.1 percent and was recorded as 10.9 percent in May 2009.

In the metro region of Santa Clara and San Benito counties, there were visible gains in job opportunities in computers and electronics manufacturing, where the job growth was a good 300 jobs compared to April.

The good news is from San Mateo County with 8.8 percent unemployment – it’s best in a year and third lowest among all the 58 counties of California State. Rural San Benito County’s unemployment rate was 17.6 percent, nevertheless.

Janice Shriver, EDD Labor Specialist says that the trend is headed in the right direction and just the mere fact we are showing gains over the month, instead of losses, is good.

Stephen Levy of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy – one of the Economists commented on the dip in the local unemployment rate as another painfully slow step on the way to recovery. He was optimistic saying it is a month of improvement, although not as much as we want, but it is a month of improvement anyway.

Overall in the California State there was slight dip in unemployment rate – from 12.6 percent in April to 12.4 percent in May. But Michel Bernick, a labor lawyer and former EDD director believes that a net job gain of 28,300 is illusory, because it is based on temporary census hiring.

In the two-county region of Santa Clara and San Benito employers reported 853,600 jobs; in the past 12 months this region has lost 12,100 jobs – construction topping the list by 4,400 fewer jobs. While the monthly gain of jobs in the region is reported as 4,200 jobs from April to May, some of them were in hiring temporary census workers.

Posted by Amitesh Kumar on Jun 21 2010. Filed under Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry