Holiday Hiring Cut Unemployment : County’s Jobless Rate Falls to 3.5%

Orange County’s unemployment rate fell one-tenth of a point to 3.5% in December and the county’s total job count rose to 1,011,900, just 2,000 shy of the record high reached in June, 1985. But state officials are already projecting a sharp seasonal increase in joblessness for January.

Holiday hiring for tourist attractions such as Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm and retailers such as South Coast Plaza and Fashion Island helped improve the local employment picture last month.

But many of those same workers already have been laid off.

The number of officially tallied jobless Orange County residents in December fell by 2,200 to 45,800 as a plethora of holiday-season jobs became available at retail stores throughout the county, according to Alta Yetter-Gale, labor market analyst at the California Employment Development Department in Santa Ana.

The retail job count turned up a record 202,300 workers in December, as retail payrolls increased by 8,000 locally. Hiring at tourist attractions boosted service industry employment by 600.

Local computer-equipment makers, however, found December to be a bleak month as the job count in that sector fell by 700 from November. For the manufacturing sector as a whole, the month-to-month employment tally dropped by 500 jobs. For the year, manufacturing employment in the county was down 5,700 jobs, including 4,700 that were trimmed from computer equipment makers’ payrolls.

Second-Best in State

Still, Orange County’s overall December employment picture ranked as second-best in the state. Marin County in Northern California ranked first with a 3.3% jobless rate.

In Los Angeles County, the unemployment rate dropped to 5.4% from 6.6% in November, and the statewide seasonally adjusted rate declined three-tenths of a point to 6.5%. THe national seasonally adjusted rate declined one-tenth of a point from November to 6.9%. Orange County’s employment rate is not seasonally adjusted.

Orange County’s overall growth in jobs for 1986 is expected to generally mirror 1985, with continuing weakness in the manufacturing sector, Yetter-Gale said.