COUNTY JOBLESS RATE DIPS DECLINE MAY SIGNAL START OF LOCAL RECOVERY.Byline: Gregory J. Wilcox Staff Writer In a sign the local economy may be improving, unemployment in Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. County slipped to 6.1 percent in October, declining both annually and month-to-month, the state said Friday. Last month, unemployment fell 0.4 percentage point from September and 0.1 percentage point from October, 2001, said the California Employment Development Department. This downward trend can be traced back to June, when the jobless rate peaked this year at 7.3 percent. Since then it has plunged 1.2 percentage points. ``It was a pretty good decline this month,'' said Bill Freed, an EDD Noun 1. EdD - a doctor's degree in education DEd, Doctor of Education doctor's degree, doctorate - one of the highest earned academic degrees conferred by a university labor market labor market A place where labor is exchanged for wages; an LM is defined by geography, education and technical expertise, occupation, licensure or certification requirements, and job experience analyst who tracks the Los Angeles area. The best news, he said, was that while unemployment fell, employment grew as the county added 14,000 jobs between September and October. The majority of the growth came in the government sector. The county now has 4.1 million wage-earning positions. ``It seems favorable. This seems to be a pretty solid trend and it does look like Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, is doing better than the state as a whole,'' Freed said. Statewide, unemployment gained 0.5 percentage point to 6.4 percent on an annual basis and it was unchanged from September. The nation's jobless rate was 5.7 percent in October. Locally, two other industry divisions - services and construction - added jobs. Five of them declined, with manufacturing shedding the most positions - 2,700 jobs. While adding jobs from October the county has lost 23,000 jobs in the last 12 months, a decline of 0.6 percent, the state said. The bulk of them - 20,300 - were in manufacturing. Statewide, seven divisions added jobs over the month while two posted losses. Jack Kyser, chief economist The Chief Economist is a single position job class having primary responsibility for the development, coordination, and production of economic and financial analysis. It is distinguished from the other economist positions by the broader scope of responsibility encompassing the for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., said the report is good news for the local economy and that the state may be poised for a dip, too. ``What you sense is the economy is searching for a bottom,'' he said of the statewide jobless picture. ``Motion picture employment is still on an uptrend and getting back on a normal track and it looks like aircraft parts manufacturing has hit bottom and may be turning up.'' Two big players in the latter sector, Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) is an aerospace and defense conglomerate that is the result of the 1994 purchase of Grumman by Northrop. The company is the third largest defense contractor for the U.S. Corp. and TRW TRW The Real World (TV reality show) TRW The Right Way TRW Tactical Reconnaissance Wing TRW The Retriever Weekly (University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD) TRW Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc , plan to start hiring about 1,300 workers and 1,000 workers, respectively, early next year. Part of that will be work on the new joint strike fighter A strike fighter is a fighter aircraft which is also capable of attacking surface targets, including ships. It differs from an attack aircraft in that the aircraft remains a capable fighter. and some of it will probably be stuff the public won't hear about anytime soon. ``There are black programs that have come into Southern California and these are the very secret ones,'' Kyser said. |
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