{"id":290,"date":"2011-09-16T12:45:27","date_gmt":"2011-09-16T18:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/?p=290"},"modified":"2011-11-23T10:00:44","modified_gmt":"2011-11-23T17:00:44","slug":"stuck-in-neutral-what-idahos-unemployment-rate-really-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2011\/09\/16\/stuck-in-neutral-what-idahos-unemployment-rate-really-means\/","title":{"rendered":"Stuck in Neutral: What Idaho’s Unemployment Rate Really Means"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Winston Davidian \/ Getty Images<\/p>

There are 759,000 people in Idaho's labor force, at least 70,000 are out of work<\/p><\/div>\n

The Idaho Department of Labor today reported<\/a> a drop in the state’s unemployment rate, but the number of people still out of work isn’t declining as quickly as labor officials would like.\u00a0 August’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is down two-tenths of a percent to 9.2.\u00a0That’s the lowest Idaho’s rate has been in the last 15 months.\u00a0 Still, Department of Labor spokesman Bob Fick said 70,000 people were still out of work around the state.<\/p>\n

“The number of workers with jobs declined for the third straight month, dropping below 689,000 for the first time since March. Nearly 2,400 workers dropped out of the labor force in August, the second largest one-month drop on record. The largest was 2,600 in July.” – Bob Fick, Idaho Department of Labor<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fick said employers expanded payrolls by just 1,800, matching the gain from July to August in 2010 but far below the pre-recession average of 3,300 new jobs.<\/p>\n

Director of the Business Research and Economic Development Center<\/a> at Boise State University, Brian Greber, believes too much weight is put on monthly unemployment figures.\u00a0 He said those statistics aren’t always a good indicator of what’s happening\u00a0in the job market.\u00a0Instead, he thinks the focus should be on the actual number of jobs being added to the economy.<\/p>\n

Greber said while the number of new jobs were up for August, compared to last year,<\/strong> he doesn’t foresee a new industry taking hold here, bringing with it hundreds or thousands of jobs.<\/p>\n

“We’re not in a position for any known big bang for the economy, there’s no new Micron on the horizon” said Greber.<\/p>\n

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Stockbyte \/ Getty Images<\/p>

"Idaho will continue to add jobs incrementally, a dozen here and there" - Brian Greber<\/p><\/div>\n

Instead, Greber believes Idaho will continue to add jobs incrementally, “a dozen here and there.”<\/p>\n

Bob Fick, at the Department of Labor, said the state has stopped losing jobs, still the Idaho economy is largely stagnant.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019re idling, we\u2019re stuck in neutral.\u00a0 We\u2019re not downshifting anymore, but we\u2019re not shifting into a higher gear.\u00a0 We\u2019re idling\u2026just waiting for whatever sector or sectors are going to be that bring us off the bottom” said Fick.<\/p>\n

Experts say the recession ended more than two years ago. Fick said, “it’d be very hard to tell that’s the case here in Idaho.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Idaho Department of Labor today reported a drop in the state’s unemployment rate, but the number of people still out of work isn’t declining as quickly as labor officials would like.\u00a0 August’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is down two-tenths of a percent to 9.2.\u00a0That’s the lowest Idaho’s rate has been in the last 15 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[73,37,74],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions\/311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}