A summary is below. More details are available on our State Employment Page.

January 22, 2019

Summary

• California added 24,500 jobs and the unemployment rate increased by 0.1 percentage point to 4.2 percent in December according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data.

• Over the past twelve months, California added 284,300 jobs and the unemployment rate fell by 0.3 percentage point from 4.5 percent.

• In December, California's private sector added 22,600 jobs and over the past twelve months, it created 254,000 jobs.

• The number of unemployed Californians rose by 7,209 in December, and over the past year, 259,090 Californians found jobs.

• California’s labor force participation rate increased to 62.5 percent from 62.3 percent in December.  Since last year, the labor force participation rate rose 0.2 percentage point.

• The national unemployment rate rose by 0.2 percentage point to 3.9 percent in December.  State employment and unemployment data for January is scheduled for release on March 11, 2019.  The national employment situation report for January will be released on Friday, February 1, 2019.