Bay Area employers slashed thousands of jobs in July, an unsettling economic setback that suggests the waves of layoffs in the wobbly tech industry have begun to undermine the region’s employment sector.
Last month’s job losses in the Bay Area were spawned by big employment reductions in the South Bay and the San Francisco metro area, a new government report released Friday shows.
The Bay Area lost 3,400 jobs in July, which marked two consecutive months of staffing reductions for the nine-county region, according to figures posted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The worst of the job losses in the Bay Area last month occurred in the two urban centers with the largest concentration of tech companies.
The South Bay lost 1,300 jobs last month. However, the region’s worst job losses surfaced in the San Francisco-San Mateo metro area, which shed 2,000 jobs, the report showed.
The East Bay managed to gain just 300 jobs, an indication that the Alameda County-Contra Costa County area is losing steam.
California added 21,100 jobs in July, which marked five straight months of employment gains in the nation’s largest state.
The statewide unemployment rate in July remained unchanged from June at 5.2%. The current California figures, however, are far worse than the record-low 3.8% unemployment rate for the state that was achieved in August 2022.
