Big drop in California jobless rate*

April's unemployment rate was 9 percent, down from 9.4 percent the previous month. While that's still the fourth-highest in the nation, behind Nevada, Illinois and Mississippi, the jobless rate hasn't been this low since late 2008 (that tells you how far California had had to climb back from the recession). Over the past year, the decline has been 1.7 percent. One likely reason for the big drop for April is not such good news: That more Californians stopped looking for work. A separate payroll report showed a paltry gain of 10,300 jobs, though the year-over-year increase was 273,100, second only to Texas, and these numbers tend to be revised quite substantially. Here's the BLS release.

*L.A. County saw a significant drop in April, but its jobless rate remains stubbornly high at 9.9. percent. That's down from 10.2 percent in March. The payroll survey showed a gain of only 200 jobs, with leisure and hospitality among the industries with bigger gains and government and entertainment among those with large losses.