California lost more than 29-thousand jobs last month. For Howard Roth - an economist with the state's Department of Finance - the figures were a surprise. And not the good kind:
Roth: "Even before this, it was going to be a long time before you got all those people back to work that lost their jobs, so in that sense, this is sort of disappointing."
Despite the job picture, the unemployment rate dropped from
11.8 percent in April to 11.7 percent in May. But Roth says
the takeaway is that the state's recovery has likely slowed at
least temporarily. Only two sectors - information and
financial activities - added jobs in May. The biggest losses
occurred in the professional and business services area. The
U.S. unemployment rate in May was 9-point-one
percent.