It's not just the nearly 12,000 new jobs California added in September, or the two-tenths-of-a-percent drop in unemployment to 11.9 percent. The state also revised its August stats from an 8,400 job loss to a 21,000 job gain. That brought a sigh of relief to Chapman University economist Esmael Adibi:
Chapman: "This suggests that we're not gonna face a double-dip recession. So the economy still has a little bit of an oomph to move forward. Having said that, though, the negative is the rate of job creation is not very strong."
Adibi says California must add 125,000 jobs a year just to keep the unemployment rate from rising. So far this year, the state is up about 140,000 jobs. Adibi says that's barely half the number needed to nudge the unemployment rate below 10 percent.
