BURBANK — The unemployment rate in Burbank held at 10.2% in August, according to figures released Friday by the California Economic Development Department.
The unemployment rate in Glendale crept up to 11% in August, up from 10.9% a month prior when the rate surged a full percentage point, according to the department.
Although the figures showed little or no change, labor forces in both cities shrank as fewer job seekers are looking for work, the department reported.
Burbank’s workforce contracted by 500, to 60,600, and the number of job seekers in Glendale dropped by 900, to 105,200.
The change may have been a result of increasing frustration among potential workers who are facing an increasingly competitive job market as employers have slowed or halted all hiring, said Don Nakamoto, labor market analyst for the Verdugo Workforce Investment Board.
“There have been a lot of people that have been unemployed for long periods of time and have been unable to get work, and so they just give up their job search and they drop out of the potential workforce available,” Nakamoto said.
The ranks of unemployed shrank by 100 in Glendale, to 11,500, but that change was countered by the decreasing size of the city’s workforce, which pushed the jobless rate up a tenth of a percent.
The number of unemployed workers in Burbank held at 6,200.
Jobless rates in La Cañada Flintridge and the La Crescenta-Montrose area remained unchanged, holding at 4.6% and 5.8%, respectively, although workforces grew marginally in both communities, the department reported.
Unemployment in the area remains lower than statewide and Los Angeles County averages.
The county’s jobless rate rose 0.4%, to a seasonally adjusted 12.3% in August.
California’s unemployment rate rose 0.3% to a seasonally adjusted 12.2%, up 4.6% from a year ago, the U.S. Department of Labor announced Friday. Local unemployment rates are not seasonally adjusted.
California has lost the most jobs of any state in the past year, with the ranks of the unemployed growing by 741,000.
Still, the growth in local jobless rates has slowed, signaling that the economy may be improving, said Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn.
“I don’t know that we’ve turned the corner yet, but it does appear that people are a lot more optimistic now than they were in the past six months,” Waldman said.
