Led by strong hiring in areas such as retail and hospitality, the Coachella Valley and the rest of the inland Riverside-San Bernardino county region continued to see low unemployment rates in December.
The valley's overall jobless rate of 4.2 percent came in lower than Riverside County's 4.6 percent, California's 4.8 percent and the nation's 4.5 percent, according to figures released Friday by the state Employment Development Department.
As reported Friday at thedesertsun.com, individual valley communities saw their unemployment rates tick up slightly from year-ago levels, but all saw drops from November.
Valley rates ranged from 1.5 percent in Indian Wells to 9.5 percent in Mecca.
Despite a slowdown being seen regionwide in home sales and new-home building, there is so far little evidence of a major impact on construction-related jobs.
At the Indian Wells office of job placement firm Accountemps, manager Gretchen Engdahl said there's been no overall slowdown from a year ago in requests for placements in the construction industry. The company places support personnel such as clerks, accounting aides and administrative assistants.
While placements are down in residential construction, commercial builders have taken up the slack, Engdahl said. "There has been a shift - while the one side has dropped off, the other side has boomed."
Anita Kramer, president of the La Quinta-based placement firm The Kramer Group, said the economy is generally healthy and "there is plenty of hiring going on out there."
However, the current slowdown in residential building has caused placement requests in that sector to practically dry up compared with a year ago, and Kramer generally does not deal with commercial builders. "I'm still getting people coming to me and wanting to work in residential building, but there's no place to send them."
That's prompted Kramer to begin focusing on other still-growing valley sectors, including leisure and hospitality.
Thomas Flournoy, a Riverside-based analyst for the employment department, noted Friday that the inland construction industry lost 500 jobs in December from the previous month, due to normal seasonal trends.
Year-over-year, the inland drop in construction jobs was 200, for a decline of just 0.2 percent.
Flournoy said that thanks to holiday shopping trends, retail led all other categories for inland region growth, adding 3,800 jobs over the previous month and 39,500 jobs year-over-year.
Leisure and hospitality, a bellwether sector for the valley, added 1,500 jobs to payrolls regionwide from the previous month, also due to regular seasonal hiring trends. For the past year, the inland region saw leisure and hospitality employment rise by 3,900 jobs, for a 3.2 percent gain.
According to Chapman University economist Esmael Adibi, who regularly tracks valley trends for The Desert Sun, valley construction and real estate need to be watched closely in the coming months because of their "multiplier effect."
Those sectors are particularly crucial in spurring consumer spending and creating valley jobs, the economist said.
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