The California Employment Development Department today released the state’s unemployment rates for last month, including those of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties.
The state’s unemployment rate was at a record 15.5 percent in April as the state’s employers lost more than 2 million non-farm payroll jobs.
San Bernardino County’s unemployment rate jumped to 13.4 percent, and Riverside’s went up to 15.3 percent.
The combined unemployment rate for Riverside and San Bernardino counties in April was 14.4%, up from only 5.2% in March.
Dr. Manfred Keil, chief economist for the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, says the logistics industry was especially hard hit. He says that jobs in logistics were already going down in the months leading up to the stay-at-home order because of supply chain issues with products from China.
“And then of course the reason they went down further is with people having less income, they’re demanding fewer imports. So, if you counter that by the little bit of additional distribution that is due to people ordering things online, that just cannot make up for it," Keil says.
Unemployment rates for each county in California are available on edd.ca.gov.