Holiday Jobs Gone, Unemployment Rate Rises

The Christmas-season jobs at retail and department stores are gone, so up goes the unemployment rate in California.

With the holiday-season jobs gone, unemployment rates spiked in the Bay Area and in California to totals not seen since 2009, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

Eight Bay Area counties' jobless rates increased by rates of 0.1 percent to 1.8 percent, according to the newspaper.

There are still many more jobs in urban counties than in rural counties like Santa Cruz and San Benito, where the jobless rates are 13.5 and 17.6 percent, respectively.

Jobless rates are around 9 percent in the Bay Area:

  • Contra Costa is the high at 9.6 percent
  • Alameda County has 9.5 percent
  • Santa Clara has 8.8 percent
  • San Mateo County is the low at 7.2 percent

Retail jobs in clothing and department stores are the main culprit for the spikes in unemployment data, which is kept by the state Employment Development Department.

Statewide, the unemployment rate is 11.3 percent.

More than 2 million working-age Californians remain without jobs and the state remains well above the national jobless rate of 8.3 percent for both January and February, the newspaper reported.

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