Blaine County's unemployment rate grew by 1 percent from July to August, but the increase could've been worse if 656 workers hadn't left the county's labor force last month.
The county's labor force shrunk from 14,676 to 14,020 in August, according to the Idaho Department of Labor. That doesn't mean people just moved out of the county. Labor force is a measure of people who live in the county and are working or looking for work. Those 656 people who dropped out of the labor force still live here but stopped looking for work altogether.
"People get discouraged and stop looking," said Bob Fick, communications manager for the Idaho Department of Labor. "That's typically the reason."
Whether they work outside of the county or not doesn't matter.
"It's based on where your home is," Fick said.
The unemployment rate for last month stands at 8.1 percent for the county, just shy of the state rate of 8.8 percent. Like the county, Idaho's unemployment rate was kept down by workers' dropping out of the labor force. In fact, the state's unemployment rate didn't change at all from July to August because 3,200 workers dropped out.
However, Idaho fairs better than the country as a whole.
Nationally, unemployment spiked three-tenths of a point to 9.7 percent as employers shed another 216,000 jobs. A year ago, the national rate was 6.2 percent.
The number of jobs in Idaho was essentially unchanged from July to August, even though employers cut more than 48,000 jobs in the last year.
"We're still below the national level," Fick said. "And there are states worse off than Idaho. But we're worse off than we've been since the recession of the early '80s. You can look at that however you want."
The state's unemployment rate hasn't been higher since July 1983, even though unemployment didn't increase from July to August. And it's 41 percent higher than just a year ago when August 2008 posted a 5.2 unemployment rate. Blaine County's year-over-year comparison is even worse, having more than doubled its unemployment rate from a year ago when it was only 3.6.
"I would suspect that there are jobs," Fick said. "But not the kind that let you afford to live in that resort town."
Trevon Milliard: trevon@mtexpress.com
