Total employment sets another record

Total employment set its fifth-straight monthly record in January, driving Idaho's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate down another two-tenths of a percentage point to 5.4 percent.

Idaho's jobless rate for January was the lowest since September 2008 and has fallen 1.3 percentage points since January 2013. The rate was also one and a quarter percentage points less than the nation's, and has been less than the national rate for more than 12 years.

The number of new workers hired across the state in January increased 1,300 from a year earlier, but the total remained under 13,000 and well below the nearly 15,000 hired in January 2008.

Still, total employment hit 734,500, up 2,100 from the previous record set in December and more than 12,000 higher than January 2013.

The number of workers receiving unemployment benefit payments continued dropping, falling another 24 percent in January to just over 14,000.

Total payments were only $100,000 less in January than a year earlier at $19.5 million, but that was because the average payment increased $15 a week to $268, reflecting the increase in the maximum benefit in response to the 30 percent decline in employer tax rates.

Only about 2,200 workers received $700,000 in federally financed extended benefit payments in January as that program ended. A year earlier about 5,700 workers per week shared $5.6 million in federal extended benefits.

In issuing the January employment estimates, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also significantly revised its monthly employment estimates for the previous three years.

Those new figures showed that Idaho came out of the recession much more slowly than initially thought, but the state's recovery in 2013 was much more robust than the initial figures showed.

The weaker employment growth in 2011 and 2012 - more than 3,000 a month lower during the second half of 2012 - increased the annual unemployment rate each year, increasing the rate in 2011 a tenth of a point to 8.4 percent, and in 2012, two-tenths of a point to 7.3.

But the stronger growth in 2013 - more than 6,000 more employed each month from August through November - dropped the annual average rate a tenth of a point to 6.2 percent.

February employment figures along with county figures for January and February and non-farm job figures for both months will be released March 21.