The Bay Area gained jobs in January even as overall state employment sputtered to a halt, according to a new government report released Friday.

Although California’s numbers remained relatively level, the region added 3,800 jobs during the first month of the new year, the state Employment Development Department reported.

“We’ve witnessed weakness in the region’s economy for much of the last two years and now those weak results seem to be spreading across the state,” said Jeff Bellisario, executive director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.

After a summer slump, the Bay Area has now added jobs over four consecutive months. But tariffs and funding cuts loom.

“The January job gains are unlikely to be repeated often if at all as tariffs, immigration and deportation policies and cuts in federal spending will all negatively affect the Bay Area and our ability to attract workers,” said Steve Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.

The South Bay gained 3,500 jobs and the East Bay added 1,500 positions. These upswings contrasted sharply with a loss of 1,900 jobs in the San Francisco-San Mateo area, according to the EDD report. All the numbers were adjusted for seasonal volatility.

“Silicon Valley is treading water right now, which, in the current environment, is actually an achievement,” said Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a San Jose-based think tank.

An array of external forces still may affect regional economies.

“There are stiff headwinds out there on the national scene that have made our tech companies very cautious about hiring,” Hancock said. “This is happening at the very same time that tech has mounted an internal efficiency kick.”

The total number of jobs in California was just over 18 million in January, the same nonfarm payroll jobs that were reported in December, the EDD said.

Michael Bernick, an employment attorney with law firm Duane Morris and a former director of the EDD, said California’s job market has slowed.

“In the last half of 2024, state monthly job gains were below the rates of 2022 and 2023 but still in positive territory,” Bernick said. “January’s report showed state payroll numbers with no net gain.”

One bright spot for the California report: The statewide jobless rate improved and declined to 5.4% in January compared with 5.5% in December, according to the EDD’s latest estimate.

The unchanged status for California’s employment totals hints at a pattern of a steadily slowing jobs sector statewide, a trend that emerged as 2024 advanced.

Despite the Bay Area’s increase in jobs in January, this news organization’s review of the state EDD’s prior employment estimates for California suggests that both the Bay Area and the California job markets were far weaker in 2024 than first calculated by the state labor agency.

The prior EDD estimates showed the Bay Area had added 7,600 jobs during 2024, but the new estimate showed the nine-county region lost 5,800 jobs last year.

Similarly, the initial EDD estimate reported a gain of 180,500 jobs in California in 2024. The new EDD report, however, reveals a gain of just 153,700 jobs statewide last year.

“The revised 2024 numbers should be a wake-up call to our regional and state leaders that they cannot sit back and expect our economy to grow like it has in the past,” Bellisario said.

He also warned that the economic landscape could become more forbidding in the Bay Area and California alike as 2025 churns ahead.

“California’s pace of employment growth has fallen well behind the U.S. average and we’re unlikely to see macroeconomic tailwinds in 2025,” Bellisario said. “Reforms to permitting, regulation and taxes should all be on the table or we risk remaining uncompetitive for new jobs again in 2025.”

Despite the uncertainties, Silicon Valley’s economy still appears to be able to at least avoid sinking, in contrast to the job losses in the San Francisco metro area.

“Somehow, this economy is resilient enough to absorb the displaced and even grow at modest rates,” Hancock said. “We’ll probably keep treading water like this for a while until we see if artificial intelligence is going to be the next big wave.”