Days after the Idaho State Department of Agriculture touted that Wal-Mart has begun carrying cheeses from Nelson-Ricks Creamery Company’s Rexburg plant, the company announced it will end production this month. “What’s happened to the company has been devastating,” president Reagan Wood said Monday. “The community and the employees have been impacted, and we did everything […]
Thompson Creek Metals Company answered questions from investors today after announcing yesterday that it will suspend a planned phase of activity at its molybdenum mine in Custer County, resulting in job cuts. The company expects to lay off 104 of its approximately 400 employees, CEO Kevin Loughrey said today. “They’re going to be primarily truck […]
How do Idahoans spend their workaday lives? Data released by the U.S. Census Bureau last week offer one answer. This is what working Idahoans did at work — broadly speaking, anyway — in 2011. Source: U.S. Census Bureau The construction sector has shifted in the opposite direction over the same time period, shrinking from 10.1 […]
At first glance, it’s good news. Idaho’s unemployment rate ticked down yet another tenth of a percentage point in August, falling to a three-year low of 7.4 percent. That’s better than the national rate of 8.1. But, like the nation as a whole, Idaho is now facing an unhappy trend: its labor force is also […]
Early this year, as a signs of economic recovery faded into yet another spring slump, Boise for the most part held its ground. That’s the main local takeaway from the Brookings Institution’s current Metro Monitor report, which sizes up the health of urban economies from April through June. Idaho’s unemployment rate held steady during that […]
Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories says it plans to hire 350 new employees. In a press release, the company says it needs more employees “to meet the increased customer demand for their products and services.” SEL is an engineering company with area facilities in Pullman, WA and Lewiston, Idaho. The job openings are for positions in manufacturing, research […]
Supervalu will lay off 20 administrative employees in Boise between now and the end of August, the Idaho Statesman is reporting. That news comes on the heels of the announcement this morning that the grocery chain has ousted CEO Craig Herkert. Albertsons’ parent company suspended its dividend earlier this month, leading to speculation that Supervalu […]
It’s a rare thing for a small sawmill to try to get up and running while a crucial market driver for lumber — housing construction — remains in a national slump. So when the Emerald Forest Products mill reopened in Emmett, Idaho, this month, something unusual was happening. “That’s a news story,” timber industry expert Todd […]
Stories about mill towns tend to go something like this: generations of families work at the local sawmill. Then, the mill shuts down, taking hundreds of jobs with it. Emmett, Idaho is one of those towns. Boise Cascade closed its mill here in 2001. But that’s not where this story ends. Instead, it picks up […]
Here’s one lesson of the economic downturn: unemployment disadvantages different age groups in different ways. Yesterday, we revisited the problem of high teen unemployment, which is particularly severe here in Idaho. Labor economists predict the resulting lack of work experience among young people — especially those who can’t afford college or choose not to pursue […]
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