Employment numbers improve

SANDERS COUNTY – As the nation and the state of Montana move farther away from the Great Recession of 2008, the job market is steadily beginning the long road to economic recovery.

 The job numbers from the month of May were released by the Montana Department of Labor, showing signs of optimism that unemployment numbers will continue to go down across the state.

“May 2014 is the first month in which unemployment rates are of out of the double-digits since 2008,” Debra Krantz of the Lake and Sanders County Job Services in Polson said.

With the latest data available, the current unemployment rate in Sanders County sits at 8.9 percent, down from April numbers when the number of people out of work hovered around 10.9 percent.

With the most recent set of data, the unemployment numbers for Montana are right around 4.1 percent, lower than some regional states but higher than others.

According to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, Idaho currently has an unemployment rate of 4.9 percent, while North Dakota is experiencing one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation with only 2.6 percent of workers listed as unemployed.

The BLS data puts Montana as one of the states with the top ten lowest unemployment rates in the nation.

The percentages within Sanders County are still relatively high, second highest in the state, behind only Lincoln County, which has a current unemployment rate of 10.6 percent. The numbers are a substantial improvement over numbers from the beginning of 2014.

The January unemployment numbers for Sanders County sat at 16.1 percent, more than seven percentage points higher than the current unemployment numbers.

“We are experiencing the lowest unemployment rate for 67 months, going back to October 2008,” Krantz said.

Krantz noted the Sanders County Job Service currently has 34 jobs listed.

The aforementioned number of available jobs is a marked improvement from the numbers of open jobs across the county in 2013.

“This is almost twice as many as this time last year,” Krantz said.

The return of unemployment numbers within the county to a more equal level experienced before the start of the recession may be an early indicator that numbers will continue to drop in the future.

There is reason to be optimistic considering the sharp drop in unemployment over the last six months of this year alone.

“Across the region we’re seeing a significant expansion of job opportunities,” Krantz said.

Going back to the pre-recession years, unemployment within Sanders County was as low as 5.2 percent during June of 2007.

The rate climbed slightly in 2008, going up to a level of 7.2 percent, but really spiked in 2009, when a total percentage of 12.6 percent of unemployed workers were recorded within the borders of the county.

A return to a single digit unemployment rate within Sanders County signals the potential unemployment numbers will continue to decrease and become more on level with the surrounding counties of Flathead and Lake County.

Currently Flathead County is listed with a 5.6 unemployment rate, while Lake County has an identical rate of unemployment.