Idaho job growth
remains flat
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August 19, 2011 |
Idaho’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate
remained unchanged at 9.4 percent for July. For
Boundary County, the unemployment rate went up
six-tenths of a percent since June, rising from
14.5 percent to 15.1 percent, though still below
last July's rate of 15.9 percent. Only four
Idaho counties have higher unemployment rates;
Adams, Clearwater, Shoshone and Valley County,
which has the highest unemployment rate in the
state at 16.6 percent.
 While
the state rate remains three-tenths of a point
above the national rate, it matched Idaho’s rate
for July 2010, marking the first month since
September 2007 that current rates did not exceed
year-earlier levels.
Idaho employers cautiously expanded their
payrolls during July but only enough to offset
employment losses in state and local government
and a second straight monthly decline in the
state’s labor force.
Just over 2,600 workers left the labor force as
total employment also fell for a second month in
a row, dropping another 1,800 to just over
690,100. The number of people without jobs was
down 800 to just under 71,300. It was the 14th
straight month that more than 70,000 Idahoans
could not find jobs.
Private employers added 3,200 jobs to their
payrolls in July, well below the 5,000 they
added from June to July 2010 but about 500 more
than the average June-July increase over the
previous 10 years. Their new hires still
reflected replacing workers who quit, retired or
left for some other reason, but the totals were
ahead of both 2009 and 2010, the worst years on
record for monthly new hiring.
Better-than-average performance occurred in
every sector but information, education, health
care and retail trade. Health care, which rode
out the recession without job losses, continued
to gain jobs but at only half the average for
June to July. Retail trade also generated only
half the new jobs it should have, reinforcing
concerns that general economic problems are
constraining consumer spending – a key component
of the American economy.
July marked the 10th straight month that private
sector employment has been running ahead of the
year-earlier levels while overall employment
continues to lag the previous year, indicating a
shift in the state’s labor market problems from
the private to the government sector.
State and local governments dropped 7,800 jobs
from June to July, primarily at public schools
and colleges for the summer recess. That was 600
more than between June and July in the 2001 and
2007 recessions and 400 more than the 10-year
average. But it dropped total government
employment below 111,000 for the first time
since July 2007, and it was the 14th straight
month that current government employment has
been below the year-earlier total.
The combination has kept overall job growth flat
for the past 13 months. Total jobs – government
and private – have ranged from 0.6 percent above
the year-earlier level in February to 0.6
percent below in July 2010. This July nonfarm
jobs were 0.3 percent below July 2010.
Over 27,000 jobless workers collected more than
$26.6 million in unemployment benefits in July –
split almost evenly between regular and federal
extended benefits. That was down from more than
30,000 receiving nearly $29 million in June.
Nearly 11,000 workers have exhausted all their
benefits – regular and federal extended –
without finding a job.
The Conference Board, a business think tank,
found three unemployed workers for every job
opening in Idaho in July, down from nearly four
unemployed workers for every opening two months
earlier.
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