California Unemployment Rate Rose Slightly In June

California’s economy is staying soft into the summer, with the state unemployment rate for June rising slightly even as employers added workers.

The state added 28,800 payroll jobs in June, the state Employment Development Department said Friday.

But a survey of workers – which is used to calculate the jobless rate but is considered less reliable – showed 37,000 fewer people employed in California. That helped drive the jobless rate to 11.8 percent, second only to Nevada and up from 11.7 percent in May.

The California rate fell below 12 percent in April for the first time since 2009, but the state has seen weak job growth or job losses since then.

In the Coachella Valley it’s not much better.

Riverside County’s unemployment rate went up, once again reaching 14.4 percent, accordng to the California Employment Development Department.

San Bernardino County’s also jumped up to 14 percent.

Locally, workers who now find themselves searching for another job in a mixed economy are finding the road a bit more tough.

In Palm Springs, 2,600 people are without a job. Based on the city’s overall population, that’s 10.3 percent of the population looking for work.

The same percentage are looking for work in Palm Desert, where the actual number of available workers is 1.900.

Conditions are much worse in the eastern part of the Coachella Valley, where yearly incomes and tend to decrease for average families.

In Coachella, 2.500 people are out of work, making that 20.7 percent of the city’s population searching for a new job.

Indio has 3,800 people out of work (14.5%), while Bermuda Dunes has an unemployment rate of 15.9 percent.

Up valley, meantime, other cities are also seeing some agonizing times the people losing their jobs.

In La Quinta, 2,200, or 12.9 percent of residents, are out of work.

Cathedral City has about 3.300 people looking for work, or about 13 percent of the workforce.

Rancho Mirage had a far smaller number of unemployed, nbut given the city’s population, it still has an 11.8 percent unemployment rate.

Desert Hot Springs’ 1,700 workers looking for a job made up 18.6 percent of their popiulation.

The U.S. unemployment rate climbed to 9.2 percent in June, adding a net of just 18,000 jobs nationwide.