Jobless rate jumps; not a big deal, officials say

POST FALLS — While Kootenai County's unemployment rate took a larger-than-normal jump in December, some analysts don't believe it's a cause to be concerned.

The jobless rate increased from 3 percent in November to 3.4 percent in December, but it's still lower than the 3.6 percent mark last year at this time.

"The job numbers have not given us any reason to think that Idaho or Kootenai County are entering a downturn," said Sam Wolkenhauer, an economist with the Idaho Department of Labor.

"For 2019, we think there should be continued job growth, although it’s reasonable to expect it to be slow this year based on the unemployment rate. The rate was higher at this time last year, which meant there was more slack to accommodate job growth."

Wolkenhauer said the rate increase wasn’t due to the partial federal government shutdown and furloughed workers needing unemployment benefits.

"While the shutdown's affected workers are counted as unemployed and are eligible for benefits, they wouldn’t be counted in the December numbers based on the timing of the shutdown," he said. "We will see them in the January unemployment numbers."

He said Kootenai County's rate hike increase can be attributed to labor force growth.

"We had about 700 new people enter the labor force, according to our estimates," he said.

Wolkenhauer said about 40 percent of those people are still looking for work.

Kootenai County's unemployment rate is between the state number of 2.6 percent and the nation's mark of 3.9 percent. The state's rate was unchanged from November and it has been at or below 3 percent for 16 straight months.

Labor also released its year-over-year unemployment rate comparisons.

Kootenai County's civilian labor force averaged 77,343 in 2018 and the number of unemployed workers averaged 2,614 for an annual unemployment rate average of 3.4 percent.

For 2017, the annual jobless rate average here was 3.8 percent when the labor force was 75,475 and the average number of unemployed workers was 2,900.

The state's jobless rate average was 2.8 percent in 2018 compared to 3.2 percent in 2017.

The nation's average also dropped to 3.9 percent in 2018 from 4.4 percent in 2017.

According to the Conference Board, a Washington, D.C., think tank, there were 22,785 online Idaho job openings in December compared with 25,788 a year ago.

Of those postings, 6,283 were classified as hard-to-fill by department analysts, down from 6,843 in December 2017. Hard-to-fill positions are continuously posted for 90 days or more. Health care occupations, including physicians, surgeons, psychiatrists, occupational and physical therapists and support positions, represented about 18 percent of all hard-to-fill online job openings.