Unemployment Continues To Fall In California

New numbers out today show California’s unemployment rate fell to 7.3 percent in September, down from 7.4 percent in August. The national unemployment rate is 5.9 percent.

Economist Esmael Adibi is with Chapman University. He says the reason behind the falling unemployment rate is good news for California.  

"Unemployment was going down over the past couple years, because people were leaving the labor force. And this report doesn’t reflect that," he says. "It shows that the labor force increased and we created more jobs to absorb everybody who was entering into the job market."

Adibi says California’s construction sector is the state’s fastest growing, which is good because it tends to support multiple industries.

"But there are two sectors that are kind of lagging. One of them is manufacturing," he says. "That is mainly because of a slowdown in Europe and China. Our export is not growing as fast. And the other one is financial activities, which is lagging."

Adibi says finance is lagging because home sales and refinancing are down compared to last year. But he says all other sectors of the economy are showing decent job growth.

The Professional and business service sector posted the largest gain for the month, adding more than 12,000 jobs. However the educational and health services sector posted the largest decline, losing more than 8,000 jobs.