Nursing students Ashley Jensen, left, and Courtney Houtz practice injection procedures in the clinical skills lab at University of San Francisco in San Francisco, Calif. on Oct. 9, 2023. Health care is one of the areas that has added jobs since 2022. Photo by Amir Aziz for CalMattersPrivate-sector jobs in California have declined since their post-pandemic peak, while public-sector employment has shown gains, the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office says.
The tech and finance industries led those losses. Jobs in the information sector — whose major employers include household names such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Disney — have declined 16% since their peak. There were more than 531,000 such jobs in July 2022, but 98,000 of those have gone away. Employment in the financial sector peaked at 500,000 jobs in December 2021, but it has lost 43,000 jobs, or 8%, since then.
“The jobs picture since late 2022 has been weak,” Alamo told CalMatters, adding that state monthly jobs numbers should be “viewed with caution” because early revisions show, despite what monthly jobs reports said. Monthly jobs reports are based on surveys of businesses; revisions by federal agencies are based on states’ unemployment insurance data.