Reported by Leon Worden, SCVNews.com,and Mark Archuleta KHTS news.

Santa Clarita’s jobless rate continued to tumble in October, falling to 7.3 percent from 7.6 percent in September. It stood at 8.3 percent just three months earlier.

Los Angeles County saw its October jobless rate fall to 12.2 percent from 12.4 percent in September and 12.9 percent a year ago.

Associate Economist Kimberly Ritter from The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC) says the story of the recovery has been about small steps forward.

“Everything has been very incremental, so every little marginal gain that we make, I mean we’re not going to go out popping champagne corks over it, but it is good news,” said Ritter.

The outlook is not so good nationally for people under the age of 25 looking for employment. The jobless rate for them is at about 24 percent. The problem for young people, Ritter says, is that there are a lot of unemployed adults out of work who are taking jobs that normally would have gone to young people.

“So you have professional adults who lost a job, can’t get back to their field. They’re taking jobs at Target, they’re taking jobs at Wal-Mart and fast food restaurants just to make ends meet,” said Ritter.

Older workers are also delaying retirement, which means new positions aren’t opening.

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In Los Angeles County, all sectors posted gains except information services which includes motion picture producers and newspaper publishers, among others.

Public and private schools and universities led the way for the county in October. Local government added 8,100 jobs and state government added 5,400, with education services counting for almost all of the government-sector growth.

Similarly, private education and health services added a net 7,600 jobs throughout the county, with colleges, universities and professional schools responsible for 7,200 of them.

Rounding out the government sector, the federal government added 300 positions in Los Angeles County.

Construction activity picked up in the county during October as 2,000 jobs were added, as follows: Construction of buildings, up 900; specialty trade contractors, up 800; civil engineering, up 300.

Within the trade sector, wholesale trade added 900 jobs, retail trade added 900, transportation and utilities added 300.

Miscellaneous professional services added another 900 jobs in the county, leisure and hospitality added 200, and financial services added 200.

The only month-over-month loser was information services, where 1,300 positions were eliminated. Mining and logging numbers were unchanged.

Los Angeles County posted year-over-year gains in professional support and waste services (up 7,300), private education (up 6,600), leisure and hospitality (up 6,200), private health care (up 5,100), motion picture and sound recording (up 4,900), food services (up 4,900), other information services (up 3,800), arts and entertainment (up 1,300) and manufacturing (up 200).

Losers since October 2010 were government (down 4,500), miscellaneous services (down 3,500), financial activities (down 2,900), trade-transportation-utilities (down 2,600) and construction (down 1,200).

California’s unemployment rate fell to 11.7 percent in October from 11.9 percent in September and 12.5 percent in October 2010.

The nation’s unemployment rate fell to 9 percent in October from 9.1 percent in September and 9.7 percent in October 2010.

“I  think what’s happening is that we’re all starting to adjust to the reality that turnaround in the labor markets is all about marginal gains,” said Ritter.