California jobless rate dips half-percentage point to 6.5%

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California’s unemployment rate dipped a half-percentage point in December as the most populous state added 50,700 nonfarm jobs.

That accounted for more than a quarter of the nation’s 199,000 job growth for the month.

New data released Friday shows the state has now regained nearly 72% of the 2.7 million jobs it lost in the early months of the pandemic when Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed the nation’s first statewide stay-at-home order in the spring of 2020 to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

But an economist cautioned that the full impact of the omicron wave was not felt at the time of the mid-month jobless survey.