Sonoma County jobless rate drops to 2.3% in March, lowest since pandemic

Sonoma County’s unemployment rate dropped to 2.3% in May, reaching the lowest level since COVID-19 struck throughout the country in 2020, according to new state numbers.

The jobless rate decreased from a revised 2.6% in April and below the year-ago estimate of 5.5% for May 2021, the state Employment Development Department (EDD) reported Friday.

The current rate sinks even lower than the pre-pandemic figure in February 2020 of 2.8%. The rate also is greatly beyond the 15.2% level of April 2020 at the height of the pandemic.

The overall civilian labor force in the county was at 247,300 workers in May, which was up almost 6,000 from a year ago. That level is still more than 7,000 positions less before the virus struck, which indicates that employers are managing with fewer workers than before the pandemic.

California’s unemployment rate dipped to 4.3% for May as employers added 42,900 nonfarm payroll jobs, according to the EDD. The U.S. jobless rate was at 3.6% in May, which was the same level as April.