Thousands of new jobs have come to the Central Valley throughout the past year, but employment in the region still dropped.
Of all U.S. cities with more than 1 million residents, Fresno has the highest unemployment rate.
The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics sets the June 2026 Fresno unemployment rate at 7.7 percent, a figure the federal agency acknowledges is preliminary. There are about 4,100 fewer people without jobs than there were during June 2025, when the unemployment rate was 8.3 percent.
The labor force shrank at the same time. Using the early numbers, there are almost 7,000 fewer people in the labor force this June than there were last June.
There are also fewer people employed. In comparing June 2025 and 2026 numbers, there are roughly 2,700 less employed people now than there were a year ago.
And through it all, Fresno has still posted significant job gains. Last June, there were 444,200 people working in nonfarm employment, and this June, that number rose to 451,300 — an increase of 7,100 jobs. Year-over-year, that’s an increase of 1.6 percent, making Fresno the only Californian metro area in the top 10 of percentage change.
(San Jose-Sunnyvalle-Santa Clara, the metro area that covers Silicon Valley, came in at 11th.)
Hanford-Corcoran and Visalia posted more modest gains. Hanford-Corcoran added about 300 jobs over the past year, and Visalia added 600, an increase of .7 percent and .4 percent, respectively.
Both Hanford-Corcoran and Visalia also saw the same trends Fresno has. In June there were roughly a thousand fewer people in the Hanford-Corcoran labor force, year-over-year, but there were also about 500 fewer people classified as unemployed.
In Visalia, there were almost 5,000 fewer people in the labor force in June 2026 than in June 2025, but there were also almost more than 1,700 fewer people listed as unemployed.
So what does it all mean?
For Rebecca Kirkman, the president and founder of Hire Up Staffing, opened her business 16 years ago. She’s been in the industry for 16 years, and she says companies are getting back to the sales they were making and replacing positions they previously lost.
“This year has been about 30% more (activity) than we saw last year,” Kirkman said.
Companies contract with Hire Up Staffing to look for people who can fill empty positions. The company has 16 locations, seven of those being in California, and of those seven, four are in the Central Valley: Modesto, Bakersfield, Visalia and Fresno.
Kirkman said the company (with all locations included) connected almost 10,000 people with opportunities last year. She’s noticed that there’s been a ‘lowering of the pool’ — companies are now accepting people who might not have the exact experience they’re looking for, but have lateral experience that can be trained into their new roles.
“There are still a good amount of jobs and a good amount of people,” Kirkman said. “You just have to adjust your expectations.”
Fresno’s economic base is also changing. Blake Konczal, the executive director of the Fresno Regional Workforce Development Board, noted that agriculture was the leading industry in Fresno until about five years ago, when education took the lead.
“We do not have the array of industries,” Konczal said. “We do not have the numbers of companies in sectors that are in other parts of the state, and those companies don’t have the depth — that is, the numbers, the resources — for people looking for better jobs.”
That doesn’t mean there aren’t any good jobs in Fresno. The Workforce Development Board, which sponsors studies about workforce needs in the area, expects $47 billion in total Central Valley infrastructure spending from 2020 through 2031.
Infrastructure jobs include transportation, high-speed rail, public buildings, energy and other construction projects. That spending supported almost 25,000 jobs in 2025, and more than 29,000 jobs in 2024.
Those jobs are union-supported and pay well, Konczal said.
Fresno’s reputation as a transit center benefits other businesses as well.
“Fresno,” Kirkman said, “is a really great hub for expanding operations, so we get to expand with them.”
The Fresno Bee
Amber Hair (they/them) is the food and restaurants reporter and influencer. Amber has been in professional journalism for more than a decade, writing for outlets like the Orlando Sentinel, The Villages Daily Sun, the Pacific Coast Business Times and others. In their spare time, they enjoy going to concerts, reading and spending time with their cats.