Employment Sector Winners and Losers

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Earlier this month, we saw that San Diego employment declined on a year-over-year basis in March -- something that hadn't happened during the last recession (nor for 15 years, according to the U-T).

The accompanying graph shows how many jobs were added year-over-year by the top four sectors for employment growth how many were lost by the bottom four sectors. Over each bar, I have noted the average hourly wage within that sector (for some reason, the BLS site does not report government sector wages -- perhaps they consider that a little too personal).

There shouldn't be any surprises here for folks who've seen prior iterations of this graph. The leisure and hospitality sector has been in first place for a while, with government and education/health jockeying for second and professional services bringing up fourth place. Similarly, construction has been the big loser for quite a while, followed by financial activities, retail, and manufacturing -- usualy in about that same order.

What's different now is that the number of jobs being added by the strong sectors has declined, while losses in the weak sectors have for the most part gotten worse. It doesn't help matters that the sector losing the most jobs pays on average twice as much as the sector gaining the most.

-- RICH TOSCANO