Upbeat job tally masks trouble

Jobs are being created at a leisurely pace in California, with the number added to the economy averaging 7,600 a month this year compared with 21,700 a month last year, according to the Employment Development Department.

There was an unexpected 21,000 bump in August, the department said Friday. But analysts suspect that was because of back-to-school hiring of educators and speculated the total could be revised downward next month.

What’s more, the state unemployment rate rose in August to 5.5% from 5.3% -- a continuation of a trend that began last spring. It underscored the toll of the real estate slump and retrenchment in construction, along with layoffs by Southern California-based mortgage lenders Countrywide Financial Corp. and IndyMac Bancorp Inc., drug maker Amgen Inc. and others.

The state’s job engine has definitely downshifted, said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “It’s still slowing.”

A survey of California households showed that 20,000 fewer residents held jobs in August than in July. The household survey is thought to be a better barometer of casual employment and self-employment than the employer payroll survey.

The August report may reflect the experience of informally employed construction workers and self-employed contractors hurt by the sharp decline in home building statewide.

Job anemia continued to be confined largely to sectors involved in the real estate downturn.

The August payroll report showed total job losses of 13,100 in construction, manufacturing and financial services, which include mortgage lenders. Other sectors added 34,100 jobs.

The containment of job weakness is encouraging, as was the reported payroll growth in the face of the national decline, said Chuck Williams, dean of the Eberhardt School of Business at University of the Pacific.

“The state has taken another step closer to getting through the correction in housing,” he said.

Job seeker Fernando Bou said he was pleasantly surprised to find employers were hiring.

Bou was worried after he lost his electronic sales job in late June, only a few months after he and his wife purchased a home in Yorba Linda -- and just when mortgage lenders, many of them in Orange County, were announcing layoffs.

“I figured it was going to be hard” to find a job, he said.

Bou polished his resume with the help of experts at the Anaheim office of the state Unemployment Development Department. And last week he lined up a sales job that will pay him $15,000 more a year than the one he lost.

“I got a job within a month and a half,” he said. “I was shocked.”

Employment experts said the labor market remained good for people with skills and experience. Christa Shapiro, the Los Angeles director for Adecco Staffing Inc., said she had placed a few sales and human resources people laid off in the mortgage meltdown.

“Even in the worst of times, companies will take a really good salesperson,” she said.

In Thousand Oaks, which has been rocked by announced layoffs by two major employers, Countrywide and Amgen, Mickey Kampsen isn’t as sanguine.

“I don’t believe the impact has fully hit yet,” said Kampsen, who owns management recruiting firm MRI of Thousand Oaks Inc.

She said she had been able to find jobs for several managers displaced by the layoffs because other area companies wanted to “snatch up” the talent, but she worried that the local market soon wouldn’t be able to absorb all the people being laid off.

Her clients, she said, “may have to look at relocation.”

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lisa.girion@latimes.com