Editorial Standards \u24d8<\/a><\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\tMonterey County had one of the highest unemployment rates in the state, data from December 2025 found. The county had a 9.1% unemployment rate for the final month of the year, ranking as the fifth worst county in the state. With a total workforce of 214,700 people, a reported 19,500 did not have a job. It marks the worst December since 2021. This was a sharp increase from the months before. In November, the ratee was 6.7%, and in September it was at a year low of 5.4%. Santa Cruz, 6.4%, and San Benito, 6.5%, were ranked at 36th and 38th in the state. Putting them in the bottom half of all counties.\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tSALINAS, Calif. \u2014 \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Monterey County had one of the highest unemployment rates in the state, data from December 2025 found. <\/p>\n
The county had a 9.1% unemployment rate for the final month of the year, ranking as the fifth worst county in the state. With a total workforce of 214,700 people, a reported 19,500 did not have a job. <\/p>\n
It marks the worst December since 2021. <\/p>\n
This was a sharp increase from the months before. In November, the ratee was 6.7%, and in September it was at a year low of 5.4%. <\/p>\n
Santa Cruz, 6.4%, and San Benito, 6.5%, were ranked at 36th and 38th in the state. Putting them in the bottom half of all counties. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monterey County reports one of the highest unemployment rates in state Updated: 11:49 AM PST Jan 23, 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,3291,24105,73077,73074,41600,1286,855,858,73075,11053,73078,72619,1498,225,73076,45712,72],"class_list":["post-146792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-datum","tag-december","tag-fifth-bad-county","tag-final-month","tag-high-unemployment-rate","tag-jobs","tag-ksbw","tag-monterey-county","tag-monterey-county-unemployement-rate","tag-november","tag-ratee","tag-san-benito","tag-santa-cruz","tag-state","tag-total-workforce","tag-unemployment-rate","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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