The Center for Jobs and the Economy has released our initial analysis of the December Employment Report from the California Employment Development Department. For additional information and data about the California economy visit www.centerforjobs.org/ca.

The December numbers continued the trend from recent months.  Nonfarm job gains at 16,200 were positive but slowing, coming in at the second lowest for 2022 and representing only 7% of the total national gains of 223,000.  Employment declined 20,000, posting the fifth month in a row with a loss in the number of employed.  Compared to the February 2020 pre-pandemic peaks, California was 0.3% above that recovery measure for nonfarm jobs, but continued slipping to 1.6% below for employment.

This month’s data contains the first component of the annual revisions with the release of updates to the national labor force numbers.  Additional revisions will be issued along with the January data on March 10 and the February data on March 24.

The national labor force revisions from 2018 on show relatively little change in the overall numbers, with the primary differences in general showing a shift in the employment numbers from the second half to the first half of the affected years due to changes in the seasonal adjustment factors.  The result was few changes in the unemployment rate in most of the revision period.

The changes in nonfarm job numbers are expected to be somewhat more significant, both due to the factors discussed in last month’s report along with extensive revisions in seasonal adjustment procedures and the industry classification system.