California Unemployment Highest Since 1941

California’s unemployment rate skyrocketed to 11.2% in March, the highest since before World War II. The national rate was 8.5%.

The Employment Development Department says 2.1 million Californians are out of work. The state lost 62,100 jobs in March; and 637,400 jobs since March 2008.

Experts say the unusually high rate is related to the state’s dependence on the crumbling housing market. The unemployment rate is expected to peak at 12% before it begins to decline in 2010.

Unemployment is believed to have hit 25% in California during the Great Depression; the highest recorded figure is 14.7% in October 1940.

Roberts said unemployment is estimated to have been as high as 25 percent during the Great Depression. The highest reliable figure in state archives is the 14.7 percent rate in October 1940.

Career Connect (From our other career blogs):

Employment News (Sponsored by EmploymentSpectator)
Following Your Passion-Literally! (Sponsored by iamnotastalker.com)
Job Search Advice from the CEO of TravelingCrossing (Sponsored by aharrisonbarnes.com)
Layoff News (Sponsored by LayOffWatch)

Testimonial of the Week

What I liked about the service is that it had such a comprehensive collection of jobs! I was using a number of sites previously and this took up so much time, but in joining EmploymentCrossing, I was able to stop going from site to site and was able to find everything I needed on EmploymentCrossing.

John Elstner Baltimore, MD

+ Read More Testimonial

Only TravelingCrossing consolidates every job it can find in the domain and puts all of the job listings it locates in one place.

We have more jobs than any other job board.
We list jobs you will not find elsewhere that are hidden in small regional publications and employer websites
We collect jobs from more than 4,429,376 websites and post them on our site.
We are private, and therefore far fewer people are applying for the jobs on our site than are applying for those on public job boards.