Sonoma County Q3 job market report sees steady decline in job postings, unemployment rate

Unique job postings are declining in Sonoma County as its unemployment rate begins to decline and steady out.

The Sonoma County Economic Development Board released its third-quarter job market report Wednesday, which tracks current job opportunities and desired skills from postings in the county.

“The job market report is supposed to help community and stakeholders really understand what the job demand is,” interim executive director Ethan Brown of the Sonoma County Economic Development Board said.

“It helps us understand where the demand is coming from, what skills should be being developed in our community and what sorts of responses are available.”

According to the report, the unemployment rate remained the same from Q2 into Q3 at 2.7%. That’s 1.5 percentage points below California’s unemployment rate at 4.1% and nearly 1 percentage point below the 3.5% national rate.

The report also found Sonoma County had 16,787 unique job postings in 2022’s third quarter, which was nearly 6,000 postings less than the previous quarter with the largest volume of postings coming from the health care and social assistance industries.

Brown said this is a general sign that the job market is softening, with rising interest rates and unpredictability in the market having a cooling effect on companies’ abilities to hire.

“I’ve heard there are difficulties recruiting because of the cost of living here so I’m thinking it’s likely that we’re seeing bad effects of that,” Brown said.

Registered nurses had the highest number of opportunities in the third quarter of 2022 with 1,247 job postings and an advertised average salary of $133,900.

Health and personal care aides weren’t far behind with 1,109 unique job postings and an advertised average median salary of $31,100.

Brown said the uptick in demand for registered nurses could be related to the pandemic and related medical fallout and Sonoma County’s aging population.

Sara Edwards is the business reporter for The Press Democrat. You can reach her at 707-521-5487 or sara.edwards@pressdemocrat.com. Follow her on Twitter @sedwards380.