Santa Barbara County’s final labor report for the year was released in December, showing flat year-over-year unemployment numbers to close out 2020.
Unemployment in California has fallen for years, tracking with national job trends. The California Employment Development Department reports a 3.9 percent unemployment rate statewide, slightly higher than the national average of 3.5
Unemployment data doesn’t include people who have given up looking for work.
Raymond McDonald, executive director of the Workforce Labor Board of Santa Barbara County, said he’s confident in the state data.
“Anybody who’s not being captured by the numbers are probably so minuscule that they won’t have an effect on the overall reporting that the state does,” McDonald said.
At 3.4 percent unemployment, Santa Barbara County is outperforming the state’s average. Lompoc and Santa Maria have the highest unemployment rates in the county at 4.4 and 4.8, respectively. Buellton had the lowest at 1.1 percent.
Due to the low unemployment numbers, McDonald said, the labor board’s focus isn’t so much on employment as it is on what kinds of jobs people are getting, how much they earn, and what kind of potential there is for future wage growth.
Two industries with potential are health care and aerospace, careers that McDonald said often offer training and opportunities for regular promotions and income bumps.
Growth industries in Santa Barbara County include construction, buoyed by a strong economy and large state expenditures on infrastructure, McDonald said. Through California’s Senate Bill 1—a 10-year, $54-billion investment passed in 2017—the state has flooded transportation agencies and local governments with money. The state is spending billions each year on transit, roads, and bike and pedestrian infrastructure. The state reports on ca.gov that for every billion spent on infrastructure, an estimated13,000 jobs are created. The state is also investing $5 million a year on workforce programs.
McDonald said his agency is pooling its resources with Ventura and San Luis Obispo counties to inject the workforce with a skill set that can benefit from infrastructure dollars. Armed with more than $1 million among the three counties, he said planning for a program aiming to train and place people in apprenticeships is set to kick off in the next few months.
While jobs like retail, service, and driving for Uber or Lyft are great for supplemental income, McDonald said it’s important for young people in the workforce to learn skills that older, more experienced workers already have.
“There’s a graying of the workforce,” he said. “People are looking toward retirement so there needs to be new workers learning those skills.”
This article appears in Dec 26, 2019 – Jan 2, 2020.
