Silicon Valley’s unemployment rate increased by 3.2% in January due in part to a drop in seasonal employment and a significant spike in Covid-19 cases that occurred before the holidays.
Gilroy’s unemployment rate grew to 5.2% in January, according to statistics released by the California Employment Development Department on March 11, up from 4.2% in December. Morgan Hill’s unemployment rate increased to 3.8% in January, a 0.7% increase from the previous month.
Santa Clara County’s unemployment rate stood at 3.3% in January.
California’s unemployment rate remained steady from December 2021 into January 2022 at 5.8% as the state’s employers added 53,600 nonfarm payroll jobs to the economy, according to the EDD.
Employers in Silicon Valley cut nearly 13,400 workers between mid-December and mid-January, according to Robin Doran, a spokesperson for Joint Venture Silicon Valley. That decline represents more than half of the job gains experienced between mid-October and mid-December of last year.
The region—identified as Santa Clara County and the southern portions of Alameda and San Mateo counties — saw the total number of unemployed workers rise to 47,500 by mid-January, representing a decrease of nearly 5,000 since mid-December.
Total employment in the region is up nearly 171,000 since April 2020, and the initial job losses associated with the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Joint Venture Silicon Valley, this represents job growth of 13.5% over that nine-month period. The January unemployment rate in Silicon Valley was 2.5 percentage points lower than in January 2021, and 8.8 percentage points lower than April 2020.
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