Department of labor data through March of this year (released: 5/1/2013 – source )
- Next scheduled government data release: May 29 (unemployment through April)
- Most available economic indicators lag months, if not years behind. We are therefore stuck with crude indicators like Unemployment and Sales Tax to provide us with some indication on how the economy is doing. The figure below shows the historic trends of Unemployment in Valley County as published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics . Note that the data here reflect true unemployment and are not adjusted for seasonality (as Idaho mostly reports them).
This page updated: May 1, 2013
According to the data released on May 1, February unemployment in Valley County was corrected down to 13.9 (from the original estimation of 14.2%). With March estimated at 14.0%, unemployment stayed about the same for the past three months, and only slightly below the same months last year.
Looking at the development of the local job pool and available labor force (figure 3), we can see that the job market had improved over the summer, but than started lagging again.
Unemployment figures (not adjusted for seasonality) for some of our neighboring counties: Adams County: 16.9 % Blaine: 6.6 % Clearwater: 16.9 % Idaho County 11.0 %
Figure 1: annual unemployment compared to that of the last 3 years
Figure 2: long term unemployment trends
Figure 3: Valley’s Labor Force over time (Tamarack peak mid 2007). Unemployed individuals =[labor force] – [job pool]
Figure 2: long term unemployment trendsFigure 3: Valley’s Labor Force over time (Tamarack peak mid 2007). Unemployed individuals =[labor force] – [job pool]
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