Jobless rate spikes again

SANDPOINT — The county’s jobless rate spiked once again last month, giving July the dubious honor of being the worst month for unemployment in more than a decade.

Bonner County’s 9.7 percent unemployment rate is nearly a full point higher than June’s 8.9 percent, and nearly double the 5.1 percent measured in July 2008, according to new figures released by the Idaho Department of Labor.

Not since May 1999, when the county had a 10.8 percent jobless rate, has the area been hit so hard.

Kathryn Tacke, IDL’s regional economist, said the new numbers are disheartening but relatively mild compared to recent recessions.

 Specifically, she sites the economic downturn in the early eighties as a more troubling period.

Bonner County’s all-time high came in December 1982, when more than 18 percent of the population was out of work.

“As difficult as this recession has been, it’s been a lot less difficult for our counties than the 1982 recession, which was horrible,” Tacke said.

It’s the area’s economic diversity that has kept Bonner County afloat, according to Tacke, who credits the growing manufacturing and tourism industries for keeping catastrophic job losses at bay.

Bonner County is not alone in its struggles, as evidenced by Idaho’s 8.8 percent unemployment and the 9.7 percent rate measured throughout the country. Even within the state, Bonner County rests firmly in the middle the pack. Both Shoshone and Boundary counties have rates higher than Bonner County, as do the cities of Coeur d’Alene, Caldwell and Boise.