Marin unemployment rate falls to record low 1.8%
Marin County’s unemployment rate dropped to a record low 1.8% in May, the state Employment Development Department reported Friday.
“That happens to tie the historical low set in May 1999,” said Jorge Villalobos, a research data specialist with the California Employment Development Department.
The unemployment report also included data showing that the size of Marin’s labor force and the number of jobs available in the county have not yet returned to COVID-19 pandemic levels.
Marin was tied with Santa Clara County to rank as the county with the second lowest unemployment rate in the state. San Mateo County’s 1.7% rate was the lowest, and San Francisco County ranked fourth at 1.9%.
California reported an unemployment rate of 3.4% for May, slightly below the national rate of 3.6%.
Marin County added 1,400 new jobs between April and May, bringing the total to 108,500 jobs, or 2,000 more jobs than it had in May 2021.
Six hundred of the new jobs were in the leisure and hospitality sector while another 500 were in the educational and health services area. Retail was the only sector with lower employment in May; it lost 200 jobs.
Nevertheless, Villalobos said Marin County still had 8,100 fewer jobs last month than it did in May 2019, prior to the pandemic.
“A big part of that is leisure and hospitality,” Villalobos said, “which is down 3,000 jobs compared to May 2019 and retail which is down 800 jobs.
One reason Marin’s unemployment rate is so low despite there being fewer jobs in the county today than in 2019 is that the size of the county’s labor force has also diminished.
Last month, Marin County had 129,900 people in its workforce, a drop of more than 5% from the 137,500 it had in May 2019.
Responding to the unemployment report, Mike Blakeley, chief executive of the Marin Economic Forum, said, “The first thing that jumps out is we dropped below the 2% threshold. It means we’ve almost reached full employment. Everyone who is looking for a job has an opportunity for a job.”
Marin, San Mateo, Santa Clara and San Francisco typically boast the state’s lowest unemployment rates. Villalobos said that is principally because their residents are well educated. He said they also hold jobs that have allowed them to telework during the pandemic.
Blakeley said that in the past Marin employers compensated for the county’s low unemployment rate by using higher wages to attract workers from surrounding counties with higher unemployment rates.
However, Blakeley said, the Bay Area’s current “hyperdynamic” economy has resulted in higher wages and lower unemployment rates in these adjacent counties.
“The entire Bay Area has low unemployment rates,” Blakeley said. “Contra Costa and Alameda are 2.7% and 2.5% respectively.”
Speaking at an economic briefing last month, Robert Eyler, the forum’s chief economist, said, “Marin County employers have been struggling to find workers across our region who want to commute in or work at the current wage levels.”
Debi Geller, the Marin business development manager for the staffing agency Nelson Connects, said, “The No. 1 thing we’re seeing is employers paying more. You have to. Definitely inflated pay ranges.”
“We’re also seeing employers being more flexible about remote work or hybrid working situations, sometimes even allowing people to work from another state,” Geller said.
Despite the tight job market, Blakeley said Marin’s economy has nearly recovered from the slide it took at the beginning of the pandemic.
“We’re seeing evidence of sales tax increases at the jurisdictional level suggesting that consumption certainly has resumed,” he said.
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