Unemployment in California and Beyond Sept-Oct 2011

October unemployment numbers were released last week and there appears to be very minor improvements. The third quarter results pointed to a slight recovery in the works, perhaps attributed to the change in the shopping season approaching Christmas.

When we view the chart from California for seasonally adjusted unemployment numbers we see a recent plateau:

Augusts unemployment figure of 2,175,200 was 1.1% higher than September's 2,151,100. In turn, September's numbers were 1.3% higher than October's figure of 2,123,300. The rate from Sept to Oct was a drop from 11.9 to 11.7%.

The drop is exceptionally slow, at this rate the statewide unemployment rate will be in the neighborhood of 10% by Fall 2012.

How does California stack up with the rest of the country? When compared to other major stats (by population) NY and Texas, there same trends of brief increase in August coupled with Sept-Oct declines can be observed. The decrease in California is, however, more pronounced in the past two months (although in this graph you can't really observe the difference since it is in actuality quite small when compared to the previous year trends, but relevant when we focus to the past 3 months.)

The decrease should increase through the holiday month's, but wel'l have to wait for Spring before we can see if these decreases continue through the Winter.



Data compiled by San Diego Bankruptcy Lawyers from RAND California.