California Creates Nearly Half of Nation’s Jobs

California created 44 percent of the nation’s new jobs in August, having added 104,300 new jobs last month. Gov. Gavin Newsom says the jobs report shows California created more new jobs than any other state.

“California continues to lead the nation’s economic recovery, creating 44 percent of the nation’s new jobs in August and ranking third in the nation in rate of job growth this year,” says Newsom. “These 104,300 new jobs, the fifth time this year of six-figure job growth, represent new paychecks for Californians and new employees on payroll for businesses. We still have more work to do in regaining those jobs lost to the pandemic, but this is promising progress for California’s economic recovery.”

This year, California’s job growth rate ranks third compared to other states and has outpaced national trends. And, California has created a total of 774,200 jobs this year, twice as many as any other state. California’s 1.4 percentage point unemployment decrease from January 2021 through July 2021 tied with Rhode Island and Georgia as the sixth largest decrease among states in this period.

Of the 2.7 million jobs lost in March and April 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, California has now regained 62.1 percent or 1.686 million jobs. Nine of California’s 11 industry sectors gained jobs in August. Government (+46,900) has the state’s largest month-over gain.