County jobless rate 17.2 percent

Lincoln County’s unemployment rate rose to 17.2 percent in January, the highest in 12 months.

Meanwhile, the state’s jobless rate increased slightly by 0.1 percent to 5.7 percent.

On any given month, Lincoln and nearby Sanders counties generally lead the state in joblessness, most often each within a tenth of a percentage point difference. January figures, however, which are the latest available, indicate Sanders County was 0.8 percent better at 16.4 percent. Other counties by comparison include Flathead at 10.6, Gallatin at 5.2 and Missoula at 6.6 percent. The county with the lowest jobless rate is Wibaux where only 2 percent of the work force is without a job.

The likely reason for the high jobless rate in Lincoln County, officials say, is the scaling down of the work force at Stinger Welding.

“I don’t know the lag time in reporting the (job) losses, but a sizeable amount of our work force was lost at Stinger,” said Johnette Watkins, director of the Kootenai Job Service Office. “The good news is we are able to assist many of the people, though. The Workforce Instructional Act has allowed us to help a lot of these people immediately.”

Despite the high jobless numbers, Watkins said she has seen signs the economy is improving, and she is optimistic for the April job fair at the former Asa Wood Elementary.

“We’re excited about it, and we think there will be good participation by employers,” she said.

The event is from noon to 4 p.m. Thursday, April 11.

One person manged to avoid the worst effectrs of the economic downturn is Mark Managhan of Managhan’s Furniture. 

“We’ve stayed pretty steady,” Managhan said. “We try to keep enough inventory in, and we’ve added more. We’re selling it. Actually, I’ve got one more person on now than I had last year at this time. We don’t know how Stinger’s closing will affect us.”

Just down the street, at Libby Café, co-owner Gary Njirich says the joblessness number is probably higher than 17.2 percent.

“It’s my understanding, with all the exclusions, that number is probably higher. It’s probably closer to 24 percent,” Njirich said. “Just look down the street, at all the empty buildings. Gas has gone up about five cents a week since the election. We’re all struggling,” Njirich said.

As high as the jobless numbers are now, it is a long way from the historic high of 26.5 recorded in March 1991, according to the Montana Labor Department. Conversely, the historic low was 3.9 percent in October 2006.

The current state jobless number of 5.7 percent is the same rate as last November, after a slightly lower rate in December of 5.6 percent.

Most of Montana’s unemployment rate has been on a downward trend since the end of 2010. 

The national rate increased in January by 0.1 percentage points to 7.9 percent.

“Montana’s economy has made strong job gains over the last two years, gaining back most of the jobs lost during the recession and adding wages for Montana’s workers,” said Labor Commissioner Pam Bucy.  “The pull-back in federal funding and the expiration of the payroll tax break are expected to slow growth in the next few months, but I am confident that our economy will continue to move forward and add jobs throughout the next year.”

Both the payroll employment estimates and the total employment estimates (which includes payroll workers, the self-employed, and agricultural workers) posted small employment decreases from December to January of 500 jobs and 800 jobs respectively.  Continued job losses in the public sector offset gains in the health services industry.  However, during the year job gains in both data series show strong employment growth of about 1.6 percent, or about 8,000 jobs. 

Every February, the Montana Department of Labor and Industry (DLI) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recalculate the employment estimates for past years in a process called benchmarking. The benchmarking process makes employment estimates more accurate, in addition to smoothing the data series and calibrating the data to new population estimates.  Benchmarked data indicates that Montana’s economy lost more jobs during the recession than first estimated, but the recovery since 2010 has been stronger than first thought.  

Revisions also reduced Montana’s unemployment rates during the recession. Montana’s unemployment rate hit a recession high of 6.8 percent in the last half of 2010 (compared to the initial estimates of 7 percent), and has since decreased to 5.7 percent.  The highest historic unemployment rate for Montana was 8.8 percent in 1983.