California's employment outlook looking bright; 400,000 new jobs added in 2015

SAN FRANCISCO (KTVU) - The Bay Area’s employment outlook is bright, but even better is the news that California overall created jobs in 2015, according to labor analysts.

Michael Bernick, labor lawyer and former director of the Employment Development Department says California's labor market did well last year.

"We created over 400,000 new jobs.  This continues a trend that we've really had since 2010," says Bernick. 

2015’s new jobs make the total since 2010, 2.1 million new jobs.

"Our latest unemployment rate in the state is 5.7%. It wasn’t too long ago in 2010, it was over 12.5%. We're now at one of the lowest unemployment rates in the past 40 years," adds Bernick.

Since the recession ended, the workplace has changed from what we knew. "That is the breakdown of full-time work into part-time work, contingent work, independent contracting," he says.

So, what do the indicators say is coming this year?

"Continued job growth," says Bernick, but with more of us on our own. Bernick says the trend of independent contracting will continue to rise along with contract work, meaning the decline of full-time work with benefits.

Bernick says that's the way it was before World War II with intense competition for armament factory workers that drove employers to offer full-time jobs with benefits. He believes that will only strengthen entrepreneurs to create more new businesses that will add hundreds of thousands of jobs every year.

"And that's going to be the strength of our economy," says Bernick.

In recent years, that's amounted to more than 500,000 new jobs every year.