{"id":272902,"date":"2026-04-17T17:57:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T17:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/272902\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T17:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T17:57:10","slug":"southern-california-job-growth-48-below-normal-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/272902\/","title":{"rendered":"Southern California job growth 48% below normal \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

Southern California bosses adding staff at half the historic pace is another sign of widespread economic uncertainty.<\/p>\n

My trusty spreadsheet reviewed January employment stats<\/a> for five Southern California metropolitan areas, dating back to 2010, that were released by the state Employment Development Department on Friday, April 17. The data is adjusted for seasonal fluctuations.<\/p>\n

The figures show local bosses employed 9.94 million in January, up 65,500 in a year \u2013 or a gain of 0.7%.\u00a0However, that job creation looks modest by historical standards.<\/p>\n

The one-year increase equals the fastest job-creation pace since May 2025. But it\u2019s also 48% below the 125,700 average annual employment growth seen during the past 16 years.<\/p>\n

Local bosses have been wary of adding staff as the business climate wavers amid challenges such as the Trump administration\u2019s tariffs and immigration crackdowns, stubbornly high interest rates and inflation<\/a>, and weak consumer confidence<\/a>. January\u2019s uncertainties do not include any business upheaval after the Iranian conflict began in late March.<\/p>\n

New jobs are also hard to find across the rest of California. Those bosses had 8.21 million jobs in January, representing a 65,700-year gain \u2013 or 0.8%. This job creation was 46% below the 120,600 16-year average.<\/p>\n

Nationally speaking, note that California overall added 131,200 workers in the past year \u2013 the largest job creation among the states for January<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Locally speaking<\/p>\n

The job additions were not universal across Southern California. See how it varied, ranked by one-year employment change \u2026<\/p>\n

\u2013 Los Angeles County: 4,621,400 jobs, up 38,400 in a year \u2013 or a gain of 0.8%. This job creation is 13% below the 44,100 16-year average.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Inland Empire: 1,731,500 jobs, up 19,100 in a year \u2013 or a gain of 1.1%. Job creation is 48% below the 36,500 16-year average.<\/p>\n

\u2013 San Diego County: 1,576,200 jobs, up 7,800 in a year \u2013 or a gain of 0.5%. Job creation is 64% below the 21,500 16-year average.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Ventura County: 319,300 jobs, up 200 in a year \u2013 or a gain of 0.1%. Job creation is 93% below the 2,900 16-year average.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Orange County: 1,692,900 jobs, flat during the year vs. historic job creation of 20,700 since 2010.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at jlansner@scng.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Southern California bosses adding staff at half the historic pace is another sign of widespread economic uncertainty. My…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[387,7,9,8,383,1286],"class_list":{"0":"post-272902","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-california-headlines","11":"tag-california-news","12":"tag-economy","13":"tag-jobs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272902","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=272902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}