L.A. fares better than state in jobs report

It's still quite weak, but the county did gain 11,600 payroll jobs between August and September, while the state overall lost 63,600 jobs. Among the bigger gains for L.A. were in educational and health services (some of that comes from the new school year), and professional and business services, a catch-all category that includes lawyers, accountants and architects. It's not that unusual for the state and county payroll numbers to diverge so sharply - and keep in mind that these results are often revised (August payrolls for California were revised upward by 44,200 for a total gain of 10,700). L.A. sectors that didn't do so well last month include the usual suspects: construction, leisure and hospitality, and manufacturing. The entertainment industry lost 4,000 jobs between August and September, but it's still up almost 10 percent on the year. Meanwhile, the state and county jobless rates remained unchanged: 12.4 percent for California and 12.6 percent for L.A.