The Bay Area added jobs in August, powered primarily by a robust upswing in the East Bay, but the region’s key tech hubs in the South Bay and San Francisco slashed positions, a new report shows.

The nine-county region gained 1,100 jobs during August, the state labor agency reported on Friday.

The gains in the Bay Area, however, were largely the result of the addition of 1,800 jobs in the East Bay that more than offset job losses in the region’s main hubs for the still-wobbly tech sector.

“Tech layoffs are a drag on more and more sectors of the Bay Area economy,” said Scott Anderson, chief U.S. economist with BMO Capital Markets.

The South Bay lost 600 jobs in August, while the San Francisco-San Mateo metro area shed 400 jobs, the new state report shows.

“We’re clearly in a funk, and it may last a while,” said Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a San Jose-based think tank. “Tech companies are locked in stiff global competition, and they’re looking at some international instability, punishing rates and some softening market conditions.”

The monthly update on the job markets in California and its metro regions arrives on the heels of a disclosure by San Jose-based Cisco Systems that the tech titan intends to slash 842 Bay Area jobs, while IBM revealed its decision to chop another 112 jobs in the region.

“People aren’t consuming and upgrading tech products like we did during the pandemic,” Hancock said. “It’s put our companies on an efficiency kick.”

The San Francisco-San Mateo region has now lost jobs for eight consecutive months, a forbidding trend that reinforces perceptions that San Francisco has descended into a “doom loop” of a fading economy and relentless employment losses.

The South Bay is beginning to show longer-term weakness. The Santa Clara County region has lost jobs for three consecutive months, according to this news organization’s review of the monthly state EDD reports.

California’s job market has faltered and managed to produce only feeble gains in August.

Employers in California added just 6,800 jobs in August, a sharp drop off from the statewide increase of 43,300 jobs in May, 20,800 in June and 29,900 in July, according to the state release.

The California labor trends appear worrisome, in the view of Michael Bernick, an employment attorney with law firm Duane Morris and a former director of the state EDD.

“The state jobs report continues the trend of declining job gains since the high of 43,700 jobs in May and is consistent with other economic data on California this week, including the unemployment claims numbers” that were released Thursday, Bernick said.

The statewide unemployment rate worsened to 5.3% in August from 5.2% in July, the state government report showed.

The last time California reported a jobless rate below 5% was in August 2023. The current levels of unemployment in California are far worse than the state’s all-time low of 3.9%, achieved two years ago in August 2022.

California’s unemployment rate was among the worst in the nation. A review of figures derived from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that only Nevada, at 5.5%, had a higher jobless rate than California. Illinois also had a 5.3% jobless rate.

The Florida unemployment rate was 3.3% in August, while the Texas jobless rate was 4.1%, the federal labor agency’s figures show.

Here are details regarding the performance in August for some key Bay Area industries. The numbers are all seasonally adjusted industry estimates that Beacon Economics derived from the EDD report:

• Tech companies decreased employment in the Bay Area by a net 3,000 jobs in August. That includes a jaw-dropping loss of 2,500 tech jobs in the San Francisco-San Mateo metro area. The South Bay lost 600 tech jobs. The East Bay added 400 tech positions.

• Hotels and restaurants lost 1,500 jobs in August. The East Bay, San Francisco metro region and the South Bay each lost hundreds of dining and lodging jobs.

• Retailers added Bay Area 500 jobs in August.

• Health care employers greatly brightened the Bay Area employment picture by adding 3,700 jobs in August, according to the Beacon Economics estimates. Health care organizations added 1,300 jobs in the South Bay, 1,200 in the East Bay and 900 in the San Francisco-San Mateo region.

The weakness in the tech sector could persist for some time, which could put a damper on the overall Bay Area job market. Still, Hancock is encouraged that the Bay Area job market hasn’t nosedived despite the tech layoffs.

“It’s actually amazing that we’ve kept our head above water,” Hancock said. “Our unemployment rate isn’t spiking. People being laid off are landing on their feet, often in tech-adjacent fields, like fintech and health tech.”

The long-term future of the tech sector remains sound, in Hancock’s view.

“Somehow we keep defying gravity,” Hancock said.