Jobless rates hold steady

POST FALLS — The February local, state and national unemployment rates remained unchanged from January, according to an Idaho Department of Labor report released Friday.

Kootenai County's rate remains at 5.1 percent, the state's at 3.9 percent and the nation's at 4.9 percent.

The local rate is the highest in the state among metropolitan areas.

Month over month, Idaho’s nonfarm payrolls grew by a seasonally adjusted .2 percent in February with only slight decreases in wholesale trade, financial activities, leisure and hospitality and total government.

Year over year, seasonally adjusted nonfarm jobs grew by 26,400, or 4 percent, the largest increase since 2006. Industries with the greatest over-the-year gains were leisure and hospitality; transportation, warehousing and utilities; construction; and other services. Mining and logging was the only sector to show a decline.

This is the third consecutive month that Idaho’s unemployment rate has remained at 3.9 percent.

Idaho’s February seasonally adjusted labor force remained essentially unchanged at 806,670. Total employment also remained relatively flat with an increase of 640 to 775,600, and the number of unemployed dropped by 320 to 31,080.

February’s labor force participation rate — the percentage of people 16 years and older with jobs or looking for work — remained at 64.1 percent for the third consecutive month. Based on online job posting data from The Conference Board, there is just over one out-of-work Idahoan per job listing.

Annually, unemployment benefit payments were down from February 2015 by just 1.6 percent — from $3.317 million a year ago to $3.264 million for February 2016. The number of weeks compensated dropped 5.2 percent over the year.

Eighteen of Idaho’s 44 counties had unemployment rates at or below the state rate. Clark and Madison counties experienced the lowest rates in the state with 2.6 percent and 2.7 percent respectively. Lewis County had the highest rate at 8 percent.

Among the metropolitan areas, Idaho Falls reported the lowest unemployment rate of 3.4 percent.