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March was good to San Diego’s job market, according to the Employment Development Department’s latest estimates.
San Diego employment was estimated to have risen by .8 percent for the month, which the following chart shows is actually fairly brisk for recent times:
Recall that spring-2010 employment was briefly goosed by temporary census hiring, so the chart overstates true job market strength for last spring. This year, in contrast, the job growth is “for real.”
There was still a nice increase even when adjusting for seasonal effects. In fact, when you exclude April and May of 2010 (which you should because those are the main months during which the census hiring took place), January and February of this year together accounted for the largest two-month increase in seasonally adjusted employment since early 2006.
The non-bubble private sector (see this article for more background) once again provided the lion’s share of the employment gains. For the year, the housing bubble sectors shrank .2 percent, government employment grew by .7 percent, and the non-bubble private sector increased by 3.2 percent.
The year-over-year increase in employment was 2.0 percent — the largest such annual rise since 2001, if you can believe that. Or course, it helps to be comparing to last year’s blown-out job numbers. Still, San Diego employment is notably better than at this time last year, and it seems that the job recovery is accelerating.
Rich Toscano is a financial advisor with Pacific Capital Associates*. He can be contacted at rtoscano@pcasd.com.