January state, local job numbers are delayed

It's the annual benchmarking process, which is another way of saying that employment data gets re-calibrated. As a result, the January employment report for California and the counties won't come out until Friday, March 9. That's a week after the national employment report for February is released. The state and local report for February comes out March 23. (Here's the EDD release.) It's always confusing, but perhaps more so this year because so much attention is being placed on these numbers (way too much attention, to be honest). Just to review, California's jobless rate in December was 11.1 percent, and L.A. County's was 11.8 percent.