California's home builders are climbing out from one of the worst years on record and the beleaguered industry and its workers are seeking signs – however small – of a turnaround in 2012.

There's no way to make 2011 look good: it ended with the worst yearly permit total for single-family homes – just 21,420 permits statewide – since the California Building Industry Association started keeping records in 1954. Overall, it was the third-lowest yearly housing permit total ever.

"The sooner we get job-generating home construction back to healthy levels, especially in the single-family sector, the better it will be for our overall economic recovery," Mike Winn, the CBIA's president and chief executive officer, said in a statement last week announcing the findings.

Construction in the four-county Sacramento region – a large portion of which has been home building – was hit even harder than California overall during the recession. While statewide jobs fell by nearly 43 percent, jobs in the Sacramento region fell more than 56 percent, from a peak of 76,600 in September 2005, to just 33,400 in February 2011, according to the state's Employment Development Department.

Things have improved slightly for the area since the bottom, reaching more than 40,000 jobs in November and finishing the year with 37,100 jobs.

Speaking by phone from his Sacramento office, Winn said that he hopes for even a small bounce in business to bring workers back to the job site.

"Because (housing) starts are so low, growth is probably going to be nominal this year," he said. "But even a modest rebound will put people back to work."

In Roseville, his counterpart John Orr at the North State Building Industry Association said he is looking for positive signs in a stronger-than-expected January for new home sales.

Orr said construction industry researchers are projecting a 5 percent to 15 percent rise in permits in 2012 for the greater Sacramento area, compared with 2011.

And January home sales are up from the same month a year ago, Orr said.

It's a start.

"It was pretty bleak last year, (but) we do expect to see some uptick over the course of the year. If we see an uptick in building permits, that means more building trades are back to work," he said. "The spring hiring season will be very telling. It will be indicative of how housing starts are going to go."

At the Sacramento Regional Builders Exchange, vice president of operations Tom Waltman said he is seeing more job ads popping up for project managers and administrators, signs that firms are starting to see build orders again.

"Guarded optimism – those are the words we'd use right now," Waltman said.

So far, any early momentum is confined to the bigger builders and hasn't filtered down to the smaller subcontractors, he said. But Waltman said some firms are hiring people back after recession-led job cuts or are bringing on new hires. That's good news, even if Sacramento's building industry still has a steep climb ahead.

"We're a long way from anything we'd call a recovery, but we've seen the bottom of what we're going to see," Waltman said. "We know there's work out there."

Market jobs sprouting up

Hiring for Sprouts Farmers Market's new Citrus Heights location just began online, the market's Kim Rockley said last week.

The supermarket plans to hire as many as 90 people from cashiers and courtesy clerks to delicatessen, produce and grocery workers for the store at 7905 Greenback Lane, Rockley said.

Sprouts launched a new website last month, http://sprouts.com/pages/careers.

"It's very simple to navigate," Rockley said.

The "Sprouts Career Portal" link "will lead them to store locations and list all the jobs available for them to apply."

The store is scheduled to open at 7 a.m. March 14.

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