2022 has been a good year for the production of babies and new jobs in Fresno County, but not such a good year for rainfall totals — although the December deluge is giving a big boost to rain gauges.

The state Department of Health and Human Services is reporting preliminarily that 14,320 babies were born to Fresno County parents through November, close to the pace of births the year before.

Although the county’s population has continued to grow over the past decade, it’s not because we’re producing bumper crops of babies — the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the number of births has declined by more than 13% over the decade.

The number of new babies this year in Fresno County is almost double the number of deaths — 8,098 — reported preliminarily by the state health department.

The atmospheric rivers of rain that have been flowing through Fresno County in the past few weeks boosted the annual rainfall total through Friday morning to 6.02 inches — about half of it coming in this month alone — the National Weather Service reported. Even so, the rainfall total is slightly more than half of an average year, when 10.89 inches typically fall.

2022 was a pretty good year for job creation, with 4,928 new jobs through November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And some of those jobs likely were filled by people buying a new home. According to records, 1,564 new homes were sold through November this year. By comparison, there were 2,503 closings on home sales in 2021, including 2,268 from January through November.

But it wasn’t such a good year for voter turnout. The November midterm elections saw only 44% of the county’s 499,979 registered voters casting ballots. (Democracy, use it or lose it!)