San Diego County Back to Full Employment

In the month of February, San Diego County recovered all of the jobs it lost during the Great Recession, according to U-T San Diego.

There were 1,331,200 people employed in the county for the month of February. This number beats the previous record, which was set in July of 2007. It beats the old record by 6,200 jobs. This number also confirms that the county recovered all of the 99,400 jobs lost during the recession.

Point Loma Nazarene University released analysis that shows San Diego County as one of eight metropolitan areas in California to recover all of the jobs lost in the Great Recession.

“The good news is that San Diego’s economy appears to be on good footing now,” said Lynn Reaser, PLNU’s chief economist. Reaser expects another 28,000 jobs to be added this year in the county. “Despite restrictions on defense spending, the ending of sequestration, continued growth in biotech, gains in tourism, more homebuilding, and growth in business with Mexico should help the region move forward in 2014.”

Even though the number of people employed has set a record, it has not been able to reduce the unemployment rate of 6.9 percent. There were 110,300 unemployed residents in the county in February, which is 42,000 more than in July of 2007. In July of 2007, the unemployment rate was at 4.5 percent.

An economist from the University of San Diego, Alan Gin, noted that 35,000 people moved to the region in 2013.

“I think it’s significant that we got back to at least where we were before this Great Recession so that is good news, but again what we’ve done is we’ve lost all the job growth in between that we needed to meet the needs of the growing population,” said Gin.

Even if this does happen, the majority of available jobs would not have high enough salaries. In July of 2007 there were 23,400 more construction workers than today. The wages back then paid middle class salaries and caused higher demand in retail, contracting and landscaping. Manufacturing jobs dropped by 6,800 in that period and financial services dropped 9,800 jobs.

“We know that the construction sector is still well below the previous peak. We know the mortgage industry is well below the previous peak, and these were generally higher paid jobs,” said Esmael Adibi, economist at Chapman University. “Even if you’re back to the previous peak the type of income is not the same as it used to be because of the type of jobs we lost.”

Click here to see which jobs are available in San Diego California.