Molly Messick was StateImpact Idaho's broadcast reporter until May 2013. Prior to joining StateImpact and Boise State Public Radio, she was a reporter and host for Wyoming Public Radio. She is a graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
When I went to Camas County to report our recent story about Fairfield, I was thinking about numbers. The county is rural and small. That means it has a low population — about 1,100 people — which makes its unemployment rate a moving target. In August, unemployment in Camas County stood at 16.7 percent. Only Adams County had a higher rate, at 16.8. In September, the most recent month for which numbers are available, Camas County’s rate was a much better-sounding 11.8 percent.
I was thinking about all of this because of the general story idea I was aiming to follow. Idaho is somewhat unusual in that its unemployment rate has gone up since the summer of 2009. (That’s when the Great Recession officially ended, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.) Camas County’s unemployment rate reflects this post-recession rise. Continue Reading →
Before the recession, rural Fairfield, Idaho was planning for growth. Now, it's a different story.
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.
To really understand the kind of change that’s gone on in Fairfield since the start of the recession, you have to look back a little further – about a decade. That’s when the town got some gumption, and decided it wanted to grow. A key part of the plan was a business park just east of the town’s main street. Continue Reading →
Department of Labor Director Roger Madsen has been feeling some heat since Tuesday, when he voiced his opposition to the further extension of federal unemployment insurance benefits. On Wednesday, Idaho Democratic Party Chairman Larry Grant called for Madsen’s resignation in a statement guaranteed to raise hackles. Grant’s statement read, in part, “Madsen is advocating for the one percent (as all R’s do). It is actions by the one percent, such as these, that threw workers from the 99 percent into unemployment in the first place.”
This morning Director Madsen issued a statement of his own, restating his commitment to strengthening the state’s unemployment insurance program. “We are not Democrats or Republicans at the Idaho Department of Labor,” he said. “We respect all Idahoans including the employed, the unemployed and the state’s business owners.”
J.R. Simplot Company announced today that it will replace three of its existing potato processing plants with a new facility in Caldwell, resulting in a loss of at least 550 jobs. The plants slated for closure are in Caldwell, Nampa and Aberdeen. The company said it expects the new Caldwell facility to be up and running by the spring of 2014.
Francois Nascimbeni / AFP/Getty Images
In Aberdeen, a town of under 2,000 people where Simplot has been processing potatoes since 1973, the news is still sinking in. “It’s a really hard thing to swallow, that we’re losing a big plant like that,” said Mayor Morgan Anderson. The Aberdeen plant employs 290 people, and 111 of them live in the town. “If something doesn’t come into the plant, we lose all those people,” Anderson said. “That’s going to have a great impact on us, plus it’s going to change the local tax base.” Continue Reading →
In a move that surprised advocates for Idaho’s disadvantaged, Idaho Department of Labor Director Roger Madsen today urged state lawmakers and Idaho’s Congressional delegation to oppose the further extension of federal unemployment insurance benefits. Madsen said his aim is to bolster the program’s long-term strength. Â
In a letter addressed to Idaho U.S. Senator Mike Crapo and distributed to media outlets, Madsen acknowledged that many people in Idaho have survived the recession thanks in part to the unemployment insurance program — but he also said he believes further extension of benefits will undermine both the program and the nation’s economy.
In a phone interview this afternoon, Madsen said he has hosted business listening sessions, and the deterioration of support for the program has been “striking.” “Many consider it a very damaging program to their business,” he said. Continue Reading →
In downtown Los Angeles this fall, a man waited for a soup kitchen meal.
The U.S. Census Bureau released a new and expanded measure of domestic poverty today. Unlike the official poverty line, which is calculated based on food costs, the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure takes into account things like geographic differences in the cost of living and the assistance received through public benefits like food stamps.
We were curious to see whether today’s report would reveal any information about regional poverty, and there is an interesting nugget. Under the new calculation, the number of people living in poverty in the West increased by four percent. That’s compared to a gain of less than two percent in the Northeast, and slight reductions in the estimated number of people living in poverty in the Midwest and South.
Census Bureau officials chalk up the gain to high housing costs in the western region. The agency has not released state-by-state calculations as part of this report, but says state-level tables will be included next year.
Women workers, recording and moving ingots in 1943
The Government Accountability Office has released a new report on the persistent wage gap between working men and women. Specifically, the report considers workers who have less education and earn lower wages. Among its findings: “Even when less-educated women and men were in the same broad industry or occupation category, these women’s average hourly wage was lower than men’s.”
As for the wage gap on the whole, The New York Timessums it up:
“Adjusted for factors that could affect pay, like age, race, education, number of children in the household and part-time status, women earn 86 cents for every $1 earned by men. That’s up from 81 cents in 2000.”
According to the most recent (non-adjusted) numbers available from the Idaho Department of Labor, Idaho’s wage gap is considerable. From the fourth quarter of 2009 through the third quarter of 2010, working Idaho women earned not quite 62% of the amount earned by working Idaho men.
The department’s most recent analysis of the wage gap is available here.
We here at StateImpact have been trying to get a sense of the potential local impact of the expansion of a federal mortgage refinancing program, announced last week. The program is intended to allow underwater borrowers to refinance, but only if they are up-to-date on their payments, and only if Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac acquired the loan before June 2009.
Nicolas Asfouri / Getty Images
Twenty-three percent of all mortgaged properties in Idaho were underwater at the end of June, according to the most recent negative equity report from financial data firm CoreLogic. Finding out what percentage of those homeowners are current on their payments and might be able to take advantage of the new program is more difficult. Until the lender sends a notice of default or begins the foreclosure process, that information is between the borrower and the lender.  “I want to know this answer more than you do,” said Mark Lebowitz, Executive Officer of the Ada County Association of Realtors. Continue Reading →
Home owners met with a Bank of America negotiator last summer, in hopes of restructuring a mortgage loan.
Bank of America is the bank mentioned in our recent story about lenders suing homeowners for the amount of the mortgage that remains after a foreclosure, but it may be that smaller banks are more likely than large ones to pursue what are called deficiency claims.
Terri Pickens, an attorney with Pickens Law in Boise, has come to that conclusion, based on her experience representing clients who have been served with deficiency judgments. “The small banks pursue everything,” she said. “I have not seen Bank of America pursue them. In my clients’ cases, whether it was a modest house to a multimillion dollar house, they haven’t gone after the deficiency.” Attorney Brian Webb of Angstman Johnson agrees with Pickens’ analysis. Continue Reading →
At the St. Vincent de Paul food pantry, shelves are emptied by the end of a busy day.
StateImpact Idaho is in the early stages of creating a series about unemployment and underemployment in the state. More specifically, we want to find Idahoans who are willing to talk with us every month or so about how they’re coping through economic circumstances that are uncertain, at best.
In the course of making calls to prepare for this series, I was invited to spend some time at the St. Vincent de Paul food pantry here in Boise. It was a busy day there this Wednesday, with nearly 60 families picking up carts of free food. At least one woman was a first-time visitor. She came in, looking a little uncertain, and said to the nearest volunteer, “Somebody said this was a good place to come for food…” Continue Reading →
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