The county’s unemployment rate rose a tenth of a percent—from 10.4 to 10.5--from September to October, according to the state’s Employment Development Department. That may not sound like much, but it translates to a loss of 8,100 jobs, most of them in government and education, according to the EDD.

USD's Alan Gin.

^{Courtesy photo}

That puts the total number of jobs lost in San Diego County so far this year at more than 50,000, and the total number of jobless in the county now at a whopping 164,800.

Nationally, the unemployment rate is 10.2 percent but in California it’s even worse, hitting 12.5 percent in October, the fourth highest jobless rate in the country, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In fact the Western U.S. is suffering the greatest unemployment of all regions nationwide. Among the nine geographic divisions the BLS uses to look at nationwide unemployment, the Pacific region continued to report the highest jobless rate, 11.8 percent, in October.

In the midst of all this bad news, should we be panicking? No, says Alan Gin, an economics professor at the University of San Diego and developer and publisher of the USD Index of Leading Economic Indicators for San Diego County. Gin says the one tenth of one percent increase in unemployment is not major in itself, in fact, it could simply be “statistical noise,” and we will know more once further data is available. A far more pressing problem is that unemployment in the county, the state—and nationally—has gone past 10 percent.

“That is definitely not a good sign, but it’s primarily a psychological issue for people," says Gin. "There’s really not much difference between 9.9 percent and 10.1 percent unemployment, but the double-digit scares people.”

Of greater concern is that 52,000 more people are out of work this year than last. “This is going to be the biggest one-year loss of jobs on record for San Diego County," says Gin. "Even during the early '90s, when we had a deep recession, the worst year then was a loss of 14,000 jobs.”

Some predict things will likely begin looking better by the middle of 2010. Several local economists say the county is probably nearing the peak of job losses; Gin speculates we may approach 11 percent in San Diego County near the midway point of 2010, but after that we will likely begin to see jobless numbers come down.

“San Diegans should expect slow job gains though," says Gin. "The economy will stabilize and we won’t be bleeding jobs, but on the other hand it is going to take a long time to fully rebound--we’re talking years. This is not going to be a very strong recovery.”