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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Jobless Rate Climbs

Jobless Rate Climbs Northeast Valley Takes Rise in Unemployment the Hardest By JACQUELINE FOX Staff Reporter The Northeast Valley has one of the highest concentrations of unskilled, low-wage earners in Los Angeles County, many of whom have been affected by the decline in manufacturing jobs over the last few years, as well as more recent cuts in the hotel and hospitality and film production sectors. Just ask La Shawn Daniels. Daniels lost his job as a warehouse worker at Western Studio in North Hollywood in November. He had just been given permanent employment status after what amounted to a two-year tryout and had worked his way up to $10 an hour before the company cut five workers just after Thanksgiving. & quot;You know what they say: last on, first off, & quot; said Daniels. The 29-year-old Pacoima man recently spent an afternoon at the state Employment Development Department’s Northeast San Fernando Valley Center in Pacoima scanning the CalJOBS Web site, which links job seekers with employers’ job listings and other online services. Even though activity has picked up at the office since the beginning of the year, EDD officials say Pacoima and surrounding cities weren’t hit as hard as conventional wisdom might indicate by either the national recession or the attacks of Sept. 11. They credit the increase in their & quot;business & quot; to a new law that went into effect Jan. 1 boosting unemployment benefits from $230 to $330 a week. Recent EDD figures show the surrounding area has the highest unemployment rates in the San Fernando Valley with Pacoima leading with 19.1 percent, compared to 4.9 percent in Woodland Hills and 3.2 percent in Sherman Oaks, for example. And, with a tight job market already in place and unemployment benefit increases just now going into effect, it’s likely the jobless claims will rise too. & quot;We know there’s a lot of job churning out there, & quot; said Daniel Blake, who heads up the San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center at Cal State Northridge, & quot;but the problem is there aren’t enough jobs for the number of people who are out there looking for them. & quot; And if history repeats itself in the Valley, Blake said, the recovery period from the slowdown is likely to extend well beyond analysts’ predictions for a spring turnaround. & quot;We know California is looking for recovery in the second quarter, but a lot of people are cautioning that the job build-up associated with the recovery may be slow, & quot; said Blake. & quot;In 1991 we experienced that here in the Valley. What we saw was that the jobless rate continued to rise until 1993, but the recession was officially over in 1991. & quot; There is a continuing debate among experts on the impact of Sept. 11’s terrorist attacks on local employment. Blake said the fallout in the travel and tourism industry afterward had to have had an impact on many residents in the northeast Valley who were employed by hotels. According to a report put out by the CSUN center, the number of active unemployment insurance claims has spiked to levels not seen in the Valley since the economic devastation following the last recession and the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Active unemployment insurance claims in the Valley rose 3.6 percent in October to 21,253, up from 20,518 in September. October’s figures represent a 56-percent increase in claims over the same month a year earlier, according to the report. However, Lily Galoussian, the Pacoima center’s office manager, said that, though the numbers of visitors increased slightly as the year came to a close, most were drawn by the planned increases in weekly benefits, not layoffs in industries affected by terrorism. & quot;We expect to see the numbers go higher for January and February as more applicants come in to take advantage of the increases, but we don’t really think there was that great of an impact on this area from Sept. 11, & quot; said Galoussian. & quot;We did have some of the slowdown going on before (the attacks), but we also had 7,000 applicants here in the summer for a job fair for the new Lowe’s Home Improvement Center in Burbank. & quot; Daniels said the anticipated increase in unemployment benefits were a big reason why he waited until after the first of the year to file. But the month of unemployment without any benefits ate up much of his savings. And despite the benefits increase, a monthly rent of $560, cell phone, grocery and clothing expenses, and the cost of gas it takes to get to interviews does not leave much margin for error. He said he can’t afford to be out of work much longer. & quot;I can still pay my bills, but it won’t last forever, & quot; he said. His goal is to find another warehouse job, but most of the offers he gets are in the $8-an-hour range. & quot;I’ll take whatever I can get, but it’s tough to think about a pay cut, & quot; he said. Blake said unemployment claims typically peak in July and begin to bottom out around December before slowly climbing back up again. But the tech wreck of 2000 and the subsequent attacks forced seasonal unemployment patterns in 2001 into new directions. Monthly unemployment claims for the Valley hovered above the 20,000 mark from June right through to November, representing the highest consecutive number of jobless claims in seven years. & quot;It could have reversed itself, like we usually have done in the past, because we were starting to follow a seasonal pattern there already, & quot; said Blake. & quot;July came along and, as always, we began to see the numbers start to taper off to some degree. Then came 9/11 and that’s just blown a hole through the whole typical pattern of recovery. & quot; In November, there were 22,126 new unemployment claims filed, a 4.6-percent increase over the previous month, up from 13,526 for the same month in 2000, a 64-percent increase. Unemployment insurance claim figures for December have not been tallied yet. Roughly 75 percent of the visitors to the Pacoima center are already receiving welfare payments. According to Vilma Bernal, who heads up the Mission College Welfare to Work Program there, 70 percent of the roughly 110 participants in the program have been placed in jobs over the last year. The challenge going forward, said Bernal, won’t be getting participants weaned off welfare, but rather helping them adjust to the rules of the workplace. & quot;One of the toughest parts of this program is not so much placement, but retention, & quot; said Bernal. & quot;These people were not used to going to work. So what is normal for us, like calling in when you’re sick or giving your boss notice about a doctor’s appointment, just wasn’t something they would do as a natural reflex. So they were having a hard time staying put. & quot; The number of welfare-to-work participants is likely to increase by year’s end, as many recipients face reductions in payments when the first five-year limit under welfare reform programs passed by the Clinton Administration takes effect in January 2003.

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