California’s economy has been pinched by unemployment

It’s Monday. The unemployment rate in the Golden State remains stubbornly high. Moreover, the Yimby movement is not just for liberals anymore.

Layoffs in the technical field. Hollywood strikes. Unemployment in rural areas.

For much of last year, key parts of California’s economy looked a lot like our winter weather: gloomy.

Although the state’s economy has long surpassed the economies of most states, California’s unemployment rate has risen significantly over the past year — a topic I explored in a recent article on California’s economic prospects.

The unemployment rate of 5.1 percent in December was one percentage point higher than a year earlier, and well above the national rate of 3.7 percent. The only state that did worse than California was Nevada, at 5.3 percent, according to recently revised figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

(The national rate rose to 3.9 percent in February; state-by-state figures for January and February are not yet available.)

California’s unemployment rate is typically above the U.S. average due to its young and fast-growing workforce, but early in the pandemic recovery the gap was smaller: 4 percent in California in May 2022, compared to 3.6 percent nationally. .

Since then, a wave of deep cuts has hit workers at several major tech companies, and entertainment employers have only slowly begun to recover from last year’s Hollywood strikes. The unemployment rate in Los Angeles County is around 5 percent.

In more rural parts of the state, including Imperial County along the Mexican border, where agriculture is a major economic driver, the unemployment rate is in double digits: about 18 percent, up 3.1 percentage points from a year earlier .

The state has seen job growth in education and healthcare, and in the leisure and hospitality sectors.

But Kevin Klowden, executive director of the Milken Institute, an economic research organization in Santa Monica, said it would take months, if not years, for Hollywood to return to what it looked like before the strikes. Some restaurants and other small businesses that relied on workers involved in television and film production will likely never reopen, he said.

Nearly 25,000 workers in Los Angeles lost their jobs in Hollywood during the strikes report in December by Otis College of Art and Design.

Elyse Jackson is one of those employees.

Jackson, the art department coordinator for feature films in Los Angeles, told me she had hoped to find work quickly after the strikes ended last fall. She has racked up $15,000 in debt in recent months and has applied for dozens of administrative jobs in Southern California. But she hopes to return to Hollywood sets.

“The rehiring and new productions,” she said, “have just been so slow.”

Kurtis Lee is an economics correspondent based in Los Angeles.

If you read one story, let it be this one

The surprising left-right alliance that wants more apartments in the suburbs.

Tell us

We are in the process of putting together ours California soundtrack for years and have recorded most of the hits. Which songs do you think still need to be added?

Tell us at CAtoday@nytimes.com. Include your name, the city you live in, and a few sentences about why you think your song deserves to be included.

And before you go: good news

Like the beginning of so many love stories in Los Angeles, Talia Bernstein and Kristen Zublin met during an improv class.

The pair hit it off and began spending time together even after class ended, often talking late into the night. All the while, Bernstein harbored a secret crush on Zublin. After months of pining, Bernstein finally took action at a mutual friend’s gathering in December 2015. As Adele’s “Send My Love (To Your New Lover)” played in the background, she nuzzled Zublin’s neck and, much to her delight, Zublin not that. do not go away.

After the meeting, Bernstein invited Zublin to her home for a date, but Zublin, who had limited relationship experience, missed the cue. “This is a date,” Bernstein recalled telling Zublin. Once the confusion was cleared up, however, sparks flew and in the following months the romance blossomed between the two women as they developed a shared love of writing and similar career goals.

Then, in early 2023, over breakfast burritos in their LA apartment, Zublin asked Bernstein if she wanted to get married. This time Bernstein was the one who misunderstood and answered hypothetically. Zublin corrected her: “I was like, ‘No. Will you marry me?'”

There was a tearful yes and last month the couple tied the knot in a ceremony at the Deering Estate in Miami, all thanks to improvisation and the magic of a good Adele song.

Thank you for reading. We’ll be back tomorrow.

PS Here it is today’s mini crossword.

Soumya Karlamangla, Maia Coleman and Briana Scalia contributed to California Today. You can reach the team via CAtoday@nytimes.com.

Sign up here to receive this newsletter in your inbox.