*State and local jobless rates barely budge

These are January numbers, as opposed to this morning's U.S. employment report for February (California was late because of its annual benchmarking adjustments). They show that the state unemployment rate fell to 12.4 percent from 12.5 percent in December, while L.A. County's rate was 12.9 percent from 13 percent. These are discouraging numbers, but it gets worse: L.A. County lost 77,300 payroll jobs in January, compared with a gain of 4,400 jobs the previous month. Frankly, I'm a little suspicious of those payroll losses (the first month after benchmark adjustments are often a little weird), but even after factoring in a few glitches it's still a weak report. Compare January's 0.1 percent drop in unemployment for L.A. and California with a 0.4 percent drop for the U.S. We'll get a better reading in a couple of weeks when the state reports February's numbers, but don't expect miracles - the jobless rate is likely to stay above 12 percent, which is horrendously high unemployment. It also lends credence to the bifurcated nature of the job market: While the number of layoffs have fallen sharply,
those poor souls who remain out of work are having a very hard time getting rehired. (EDD release)

*The news wasn't all bad. The benchmark revision shows that California's private sector employed 113,200 more people over the past year than was previously reported, according to Beacon Economics.