Orange County’s unemployment rate will be 8% this year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and then drop to 4.6% in 2022, economists at California State University, Fullerton projected.
“Our baseline outlook is for the recovery to continue in Southern California and Orange County, though the next phase is expected at a more gradual clip,” said the economists led by Anil Puri and Mira Farka of the university’s Woods Center for Economic Analysis and Forecasting.
The OC jobless rate stood at 9% last month.
“We anticipate that it will take up to the end of 2022 for employment levels to approximate those at the beginning of 2020,” they said during the virtual conference to share their 2021 Economic Forecast.
Puri and Farka expect Orange County to lose payroll jobs at a rate of 7.5% in 2020 and then gain jobs at rates of 3.7% in 2021 and 1.7% in 2022. Continue reading in the Orange County Business Journal.