Higher-paying jobs are finally starting to move again in San Diego County. Fresh state labor figures for February show a clear pickup in hiring for better compensated roles, with the strongest gains in professional and business services and technical fields. The latest monthly snapshot nudged the region’s annual net job gain to about 7,900 and kept the county’s unemployment rate parked in the mid-4 percent range. For local jobseekers, that meant noticeably more openings for software developers, nurses and other skilled positions than in many recent months.
Industry winners and job postings
The biggest winner in February was higher paid professional and business services, which added roughly 2,200 payroll positions. Leisure and hospitality, still one of San Diego’s heavyweight hiring engines, chipped in about 2,000 jobs for the month and roughly 7,000 over the year.
Online, the hiring picture was just as busy. State figures counted about 46,338 job ads in the San Diego metro area in February. Retail salespersons led the pack with 1,392 postings, followed closely by home health and personal care aides at 1,315, registered nurses at 1,297 and software developers at 1,011.
On the employer side, some familiar local giants dominated the listing boards. Qualcomm, UC San Diego, Apple, General Atomics and Scripps Health were among the companies posting the highest number of openings, according to reporting from The San Diego Union‑Tribune.
Local and national context
San Diego County’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate landed at about 4.5 percent in February, a bit tighter than California’s roughly 5.4 percent statewide rate. Nationally, the jobless rate for February was 4.4 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. State labor totals are compiled by the California Employment Development Department…