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The unemployment rate in Santa Clara County registered its most significant improvement since the job market began worsening in early 2001, falling to 7.1 percent in May from 7.6 percent in April. And for the third month in a row, the county added jobs.
Still, the numbers don't point to much immediate improvement in the job market for the 71,000 county residents who are out of work.
"We've ridden it out," said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. "That's different than saying we're in a roaring recovery. We've stopped falling."
Economists said it was encouraging that the county added 3,400 jobs from April to May, and that revised figures showed May was the third consecutive month of growth.
One closely watched sector - business services, a category that includes software companies and temporary agencies - added jobs for the third month in a row. An upswing in temporary hiring is seen as an sign that the rest of the job market is poised for recovery. Some local temporary agencies are reporting small increases in demand for their workers; others say it's too soon to spot a trend.
Another signal that would indicate a turnaround in the local job market is increased demand for the computer equipment produced by Silicon Valley companies. Economists say that although orders seem to have stopped dropping, they haven't increased significantly, either.
"It's going to take a stronger economy before employers in Silicon Valley or anywhere will take a little more risk and hire more broadly," said Steven Cochrane, senior economist at Economy.com.
For job-hunters, the situation continues to be frustrating - but some see glimmers of hope.
"It's not getting worse. It seems like it may be getting a little bit better," said Joe Brisbin, a software development manager from San Jose who was looking for work this week at the BrassRing job fair in Santa Clara. Brisbin said he has had two interviews in the past two weeks.
At first blush, the latest unemployment figures showed even more dramatic improvement than the job-creation numbers. But even though the county's unemployment rate fell sharply last month from a revised 7.6 percent in April, that doesn't mean more residents are actually working.
The unemployment rate is in the percentage of county residents who want to work but can't find jobs. It doesn't include students, homemakers or retirees, for example. This percentage declined in May because the total number of people in the county who are working or looking for work went down. The number of county residents who had jobs stayed about the same. That means several thousand county residents either moved away or dropped out the job market.
Statewide, the employment numbers showed little change. California's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 6.3 percent in May, down from a revised 6.5 percent in April. The state lost 9,000 jobs from April to May.
Most observers of the local economy predict that the recovery will be slow, and may not be felt by most job-hunters until the end of the year or early next year.
"Things are statistically better. We're getting a very slight turnaround. But they're not going to be noticeably better until next year," said Richard Carlson, an economist and partner at Spectrum Economics. "It won't get good enough fast enough for job seekers to notice it, and people to start to feel good, until next year."
The state's looming budget deficit is one reason some are cautious about predicting a fast recovery, although not everyone agrees that it will have a large effect on the job market. In addition, local companies such as Hewlett-Packard continue to lay off workers.
And some note that previous predictions of a recovery haven't come true.
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