Business Spotlight:

While the pace of job losses appears to be slowing locally, that doesn’t necessarily mean that unemployment rates will fall, Nakamoto said.

The national workforce has grown in recent months, and the addition of jobs created by stimulus funding could increase the pool of job seekers in the market, Nakamoto said.

That change will likely keep unemployment rates up, but it’s not a bad sign, he said.

“In a way it’s positive because that way more people are confident that there could be employment possibilities so they are trying to reenter the workforce,” he said.

Those local job seekers might be helped by a resolution to a contract dispute between major studios and the Screen Actors Guild, which has delayed major projects that have kept many potential workers unemployed, he said.

“If that issue is resolved, that could be a pretty good boost, not only for employment, but for the whole general economy locally because we have so many jobs tied to the entertainment industry,” he said.