Now that the revised job data for December is in, let’s have a look at how San Diego’s employment sectors fared during the year 2009.
This first graph displays the number of jobs lost (and, in a couple of cases, gained) in San Diego’s major job industries as delineated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
In terms of the raw number of jobs lost, the “professional and business services” sector was hit the hardest, even outpacing the long-suffering construction industry. However, that is because the professional services sector is a huge one in San Diego. This next chart puts job losses into the context of sector size by measuring the percent decrease or increase in each sector’s employment during 2009:
Here we see that professional services endured some loss, but in percent terms it shrank less than (in order) the construction, wholesale trade, manufacturing, and retail trade sectors. The construction industry fared notably worse than all others, as has more or less been the case for the entire post-housing bubble period. Education and health care were the only sectors to grow in 2009.
In case it helps put the above two graphs in perspective, I’ve included a pie chart showing how big each sector is as percent of overall county employment. Government is in the lead here, providing over 18 percent of San Diego jobs.
I should note that the colors in the graphs are automatically chosen by Microsoft Excel when I select the “vary colors by point” option. Is anyone else hungry for Froot Loops?
— RICH TOSCANO