Jump in unemployment

L.A. County's jobless rate in March was 5.8 percent, up from a revised 5.3 percent a month earlier but well under the statewide rate of 6.2 percent. The higher levels are obviously not great news, but they're hardly calamitous either, especially for Los Angeles. For those of us around in the early 1990s when the jobless rate was routinely in the double-digits, 5.8 percent looks pretty good. (Just consider what’s going on in NY, where thousands of financial services folks are losing their jobs.) Meanwhile, the state's separate payroll survey for March shows that county employment was up 25,000 from February. The entertainment sector had an increase of 8,600 jobs, much of that from post-writers strike rehiring (will the sky-is-falling folks ever admit that the walkout was not a very big economic deal?). Government increased payrolls by 5,100. Financial services jobs were stable and construction took only a slight dip. Let's be clear: There will be tougher months ahead on the labor front. But March wasn't half bad. Here's the EDD release.