Idaho job growth remains flat |
| 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. |