L.A.'s terrible jobs report for January

I picked a good time to take a couple of days off - the county's unemployment picture took an awful turn on Friday, with an increase in the unemployment rate, to 10.4 percent from 10.3 percent the previous month, and the loss of 81,000 payroll jobs. Most every sector took a serious hit. The entertainment industry not only saw a drop of 14,000 payroll positions from December, but those December numbers were revised sharply downward - from 139,300 to 120,300, or nearly 14 percent. It's worth pointing out that this is the time of year when government bean counters make benchmark revisions to the jobs count, and the results can get a little hinky. Also worth mentioning is that movie and TV employment is notoriously erratic and difficult to calculate (just as with everything that involves Hollywood accounting). That said, the January decline is not great news, especially since overall U.S. movie and television employment has been strong this year. The February numbers for California and L.A. County come out on Friday, so those will be interesting to check out. But as you can see from the release, everything got whacked in L.A. From the Business Journal:

The county's unemployment rate remains worse than the statewide average of 9.8 percent in January and the national average of 7.9 percent. Unemployment rates in both the City of Los Angeles and Long Beach were above 12 percent. About the only piece of good news in January's jobs report was in the year-over-year comparison of payroll jobs figures. Year over year, the county gained 74,000 in the January period, for a strong growth rate of 2 percent. Professional and business services led the way, with nearly 23,000 jobs gained, followed by leisure and hospitality, which gained nearly 19,000 jobs.