Emilie Ritter Saunders was StateImpact Idaho's multimedia reporter until the project merged with the Boise State Public Radio site in July 2013. She previously worked as the Capitol Bureau Chief for Montana Public Radio and was a Senior Fellow with NPR's Economic Training Project from 2009 until 2010. She graduated from the University of Montana School of Journalism in 2007.
A prominent DC-based think-tank says real growth in U.S. jobs is attributed primarily to new startup companies, not existing small businesses. The Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization, reports most jobs created in the last 30 years have come from young, new enterprises. In the video below, Brookings Senior Fellow Robert Litan says the age of a business is a better predictor of its job-creating potential than the size of that business. Many successful startups began during periods of economic trouble, he adds.
On Rock Center with Brian Williams this week, a Nampa woman went grocery shopping in the middle of the night, when her monthly food assistance money was deposited.
Two families from Nampa were featured in an NBC piece this week about the high demand for food assistance and the rush to purchase food on the first of the month, when money is deposited into recipients’ accounts. What the piece doesn’t detail is the number of Idahoans enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), and how much that number has grown in recent years.
According to this study from the Urban Institute, Idaho saw its SNAP enrollment go up by 123 percent between 2007 and 2010. Idaho’s increase in SNAP rolls was second only to Nevada’s, where use of the program grew by 128 percent over the same period.
Idaho Department of Health and Welfare spokesman Tom Shanahan confirms that Idaho has watched demand for SNAP benefits rise steadily, month by month, since September 2007. State enrollment totaled 87,232 that month. In September of this year, it stood at 234,523, an increase of nearly 170 percent. Continue Reading →
Idaho’s poverty rate has increased 1.4 percent from 2009 to 2010. The U.S. Census Bureau released new poverty and income estimates for 2010 today. The data includes Idaho’s state poverty and income estimates, plus, rates on a county-by-county level and for each school district.
The annual estimates are based on a combination of data from the American Community Survey, federal tax information, records on food assistance participation, Census statistics and annual population estimates.
U.S. Census Bureau
Click on the image to see the interactive Census map
In 2009, the percentage of Idahoans living in poverty was 14.4. The 2010 estimate shows 15.8 percent of Idahoans are in poverty. The counties with the highest rates include Lemhi, Owyhee and Madison Counties. The percent of people living in poverty has steadily increased since 2008, the official start of the latest recession. That same measure of poverty back in 2007, before the recession, was 12.1 percent. Continue Reading →
Georgetown University / Center on Education and the Workforce
Click the image to enlarge
A recent study finds Idaho will lead the nation in the creation of new jobs in the health sciences sector. Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce published this study earlier this month. The report forecasts job demand. More specifically, it looks at the kinds of jobs that will be available for high school graduates, college grads and those with advanced degrees.
Here’s an excerpt from the study:
The key for students, workers, job counselors and educators will be knowing where to find these opportunities and then matching the right job with the right applicant. That is where this report can help. In the full version of the report, we present forecasts on job opportunities and skill requirements through 2018, broken down by the 16 career and technical education (CTE) clusters by the Carl D. Perkins Act of 2006. The Perkins Act is a federal program aimed at improving technical education in the United States, and its clusters are widely used by vocational programs and counselors to assist students in preparing for and then finding jobs. Using our forecasts, we identify the most promising clusters for three categories of job seekers. Those are workers with:
High School Jobs: For those with a high school diploma or less.
Middle skill jobs: For those with some college but no degree (including postsecondary vocational certificates) or an Associate’s degree.
BA plus jobs: For those with a Bachelor’s degree or better.
Now that Black Friday is almost over and you’re letting all that turkey and stuffing digest, take a look back at the stories that got the most clicks and comments this week.
Ten Idaho Lawmakers Sign Norquist’s Anti-Tax Pledge: One of the people being blamed for the supercommittee’s failure (often by Democrats, and on occasion by Republicans), is Grover Norquist. He’s a longtime lobbyist who runs the group Americans for Tax Reform. Norquist is known for getting hundreds of lawmakers from around the country to sign a pledge promising never to raise taxes. Ten of Idaho’s lawmakers have signed on.
The Future of Idaho’s Unemployment Benefits Uncertain: 25,000 Idahoans are currently receiving unemployment insurance benefits, that number could be cut in half unless federal emergency unemployment benefits are extended at the end of the year.
Idaho in Top Ten for Cuts in Mental Health Spending: As advocates for people with mental illness will point out, Idaho hasn’t had a great track record of funding services for the state’s mentally ill. “I think the shocking part is we spend $44 per capita on mental health, and the national average is $122. So we’re about a third of the national average,” said Doug McKnight, president of the Idaho chapter of NAMI. Moreover, Idaho remains the only state without a local suicide prevention hotline.
Idaho’s Unemployment Rate Moves in a Positive Direction: Idaho’s unemployment rate ticked down to its lowest level in nearly two years last month. But many counties across the state face rates in the double-digits. We created an interactive map to better visualize the state’s unemployment picture.
As you’ve probably heard by now, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction’s negotiations failed this week. Dubbed the supercommittee, it was charged with finding at least $1.2 trillion in debt savings over the next decade. Now the political finger-pointing is well underway.
One of the people being blamed for the supercommittee’s failure (often by Democrats, and on occasion by Republicans), is Grover Norquist. He’s a longtime lobbyist who runs the group Americans for Tax Reform. Norquist is known for getting hundreds of lawmakers from around the country to sign a pledge promising never to raise taxes.
On the heels of the bipartisan supercommittee’s announcement that it failed to reach an agreement to cut $1.2 trillion in federal spending, Idaho’s governor decided to weigh in. Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter’s opinion piece, with the headline “Leaner, More Focused Government Must Be Our New Normal”, has already appeared in Roll Call and has been distributed to media across the state. Here’s what he has to say:
How can a largely rural western state of roughly 1.5 million people – a state whose Republican credentials are matched only by its almost contrarian sense of independence – possibly set an example of responsible governance for the rest of America?
In Idaho, we did it by reassessing the proper role of government in people’s lives. We did it by identifying what our Constitution and laws require government to do and eliminating much of what they don’t. We did it by instituting zero-base budgeting and bringing business principles to government. We did it by making tough choices and difficult adjustments early in the economic downturn. And we did it by being cautious, prudent, and yes, conservative with taxpayer dollars in order to live within the people’s means. Continue Reading →
StateImpact Idaho is beginning to look at the effects of the $34 million Medicaid cut that the Idaho Legislature passed last session. Related to that, a new report from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) tallies the state-by-state changes in general fund appropriations for state mental health agencies since 2009. According to the report, Idaho is among the ten states that have made the greatest cuts, by percentage, since that year.
As advocates for people with mental illness will point out, Idaho hasn’t had a great track record of funding services for the state’s mentally ill. “I think the shocking part is we spend $44 per capita on mental health, and the national average is $122. So we’re about a third of the national average,” said Doug McKnight, president of the Idaho chapter of NAMI. Continue Reading →
Here’s a look back at our most viewed, shared and commented stories of the week.
In Rural Idaho, the Recession Changes One Town’s Fate: Idaho is one of a handful of states where the unemployment rate has gone up since the national recession ended more than two years ago. Numbers have soared to their highest levels in rural places, among them Camas County in central Idaho. This summer, local unemployment approached 17 percent. That’s a number that has left Fairfield, population 416 and the only town in Camas County, struggling for survival.
Jobless in Idaho: A Former HP Employee Struggles Through Years of Unemployment: Nathan Bussey began working for Hewlett-Packard before he’d even graduated from college. He was still a student at Boise State University when he started out in the tech support call center in 1999. By 2005, he’d landed a job as a technical consultant, working on printer installations for Fortune 100 companies all over the country. Then, in 2008, he got bad news. He, like many others on his team, was being laid off. Continue Reading →
Click on the map for an interactive view of county-by-county data
Idaho’s unemployment rate last month ticked down to its lowest level in nearly two years. The Idaho Department of Labor reports the seasonally adjusted rate dropped two-tenths of a percent to 8.8. The national unemployment rate for October was 9.0 percent.
There are still at least 66,400 Idahoans without jobs, that’s down from 73,600 a year ago. Idaho Department of Labor spokesman Bob Fick says those figures don’t include people who have stopped looking for work or who have part-time jobs but are wanting to work full-time.
Fick says it’s slightly unusual to see a drop in the unemployment rate between September and October, because that’s typically a time when seasonal employees are dropped from payrolls and join the job hunt. “Employers reduced jobs by only 900, typically, it’s substantially more than that,” Fick says. “During the expansion from 2002 to 2007 the average was 1,800 jobs lost between September and October.” Continue Reading →
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