California unemployment claims drop to near pre-COVID levels
Initial unemployment claims in California have dropped to their lowest level since business shutdowns were first launched last spring to combat the coronavirus, marking a major improvement for the state's wobbly job market.
California workers filed 47,900 initial claims for unemployment during the week ended Nov. 27, a decline of 4,600 from the prior week, the U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday.
Unemployment claims have decreased in California for five of the last six weeks, a steady improvement in the closely watched barometer of the health or frailty of the statewide job market.
In the six North Bay counties (Sonoma, Solano, Marin, Napa, Mendocino and Lake), initial applications have been trending down since early April, according to Business Journal analysis of California Employment Development Department data.
Initial claims for the region ticked up to 1,435 for the week ending Nov. 13, the most recent data available. Filings the previous week were 1,369, which was the region’s lowest level since the 1,259 claims filed the week ending March 14, 2020, just before the first pandemic business shutdowns in the state sent filings skyrocketing, reaching nearly 28,000 in the North Bay the last week of March 2020.
Nationwide, workers filed 222,000 initial claims for unemployment, an increase of 28,000 from the week before, the Labor Department reported.
Initial claims in California are now only 7% higher than the weekly total typical back when the statewide economy was fully healthy.
During January 2020 and February 2020, the final two months before business shutdowns began to battle the spread of the coronavirus, California workers filed an average of 44,800 unemployment claims a week. Last week's total was just 3,100 above that.
The most recent filings also were the lowest claims have been since March 7, 2020, days before wide-ranging shutdowns began triggering mammoth layoffs in California.
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North Bay Business Journal contributed to this report.
