Lincoln County unemployment highest in Montana
<p>Johnette Watkins of Job Service</p>
Lincoln County’s unemployment rate returned to the top spot in the state, according to data released by the Montana Department of Labor and Industry.
The most recent report, unemployment claims from December 2014, shows the unemployment rate in Lincoln County at 11.5 percent, up almost a full percentage point from the 10.6 percent rate of the previous month, but down four points from the previous year.
Two other Montana counties, Glacier and Sanders, reported rates above 10 percent in December. Those rates were 10.5 and 10.8 percent, respectively. Montana’s average unemployment rate for December was 4.2 percent, the national rate was 5.6 percent in the same time period.
Kootenai Job Service manager Johnette Watkins said this is traditionally a bad time of year for employment in the county. “This is generally the time of year when our rates peak,” she said.
Historically, December has been a rough month for unemployment in Lincoln County, hovering between 13 and 17 percent since 2008. The highest December rate in recent years was recorded in 2010, when unemployment spiked to 16.9 percent. It hasn’t been lower than the most recent statistic since 2007, when the December rate was 10 percent.
The December data does not reflect the impact of the Troy Mine closure. The closure is expected to result in the loss of up to 80 full-time jobs in Lincoln County, which will drive the unemployment rate even higher.
“You would expect to see an increase from the closure. But sometimes the impact isn’t as great as you expect,” Watkins said.
The unemployment rate is calculated by dividing the number of unemployed workers by those in the labor force, that is, those working or actively looking for work. “Discouraged” workers, those not currently seeking work, are not factored into the statistics. Underemployed workers, people working part-time jobs or jobs below their commonly accepted training and experience level, are also counted as employed for statistical purposes.
In spite of the bleak news, Watkins remains hopeful. “It seems like every time things start looking better, some other big things happen. But I’m still hopeful. We have a lot of smaller activities happening, and we need that. We need the tourism and the retail and the light manufacturing to diversity the economy. That’s what’s makes it possible to absorb those jobs back into the economy,” she said.