CA Companies Cut Thousands Of Jobs In April

CALIFORNIA — Thousands of Californian workers will be out of a job in the coming months after some major Golden State employers announced more layoffs.

The culling continues in the tech sector, including major cuts looming at Google, where CEO Sundar Pichai netted nearly $226 million in pay last year. On Monday, Facebook parent company Meta announced another 1,500 layoffs impacting Bay Area offices, including more than 850 around the company's Menlo Park headquarters and hundreds at offices in San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Fremont and Burlingame.

In other labor news, Hollywood is bracing for a potential strike among the 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America, which would halt major productions and serve a blow to the Los Angeles economy.

According to the state database of Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) notices shows companies across several sectors informed employees of more job cuts coming in the weeks ahead.

Here are a few of the biggest cuts announced in April:

• Hollywood Palladium (Los Angeles County): 509 job cuts, effective June 1.
• Virgin Orbit (Kern, Los Angeles counties): 661 job cuts.
• General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (San Diego County): 374 job cuts, effective June 5.
• Raytheon Technologies (Los Angeles County): 175 job cuts, effective June 9.
• Cepheid (Alameda/Santa Clara counties): 625 job cuts, effective June 20.

According to the most recent data available from the state Employment Development Department, California's unemployment rate held steady at 4.4 percent in March, unchanged from February and the same rate as the year before.

The state said the construction industry suffered the biggest employment losses in March, shedding more than 8,000 jobs. Employment officials believe extreme weather played a role in the decline as atmospheric rivers hammered the state that month.

Other major sectors showed gains on the month, including 7,000 jobs added in education and health services, nearly 7,000 in the government, and 5,400 in the information field.

Unemployment rates can vary widely between counties, hitting as low as 3 percent in San Francisco in March and as high as 11.3 percent in Tulare County.