Idaho’s unemployment rate sets record

State at 11.5%, Bonner County at 16.9%

The April unemployment rate in Idaho hit an all-time high, jumping 9 percentage points from a record low 2.5 percent in March to the highest ever recorded, 11.5 percent.

According to the Idaho Department of Labor, rates exceeded a record-setting 10.2 percent in December 1982 and the Great Recession peak rate of 9.6 percent in June 2009.

In bonner County, the unemployment rate is even higher at 16.9 percent. The county has the fifth-highest rate in the state, behind Blaine at 21.7 percent, Valley at 20.4 percent, Shoshone at 19.8 percent, and Adams at 18.4 percent, and just above Kootenai County with an unemployment rate of 16.8 percent.

Seasonally adjusted, 13,617 people are unemployed in Kootenai County. In January, just 2,594 people were unemployed.

Principal research analyst for the Idaho Department of Labor, Karen Jarboe Singletary, said Friday that it’s difficult to predict how long it will take to recover from these unemployment numbers.

“This is unique in that there is this one really big thing that happened and we know when it happened and that it affected the economy,” Singletary said.

In the 1982 recession and the Great Recession, the peak rate of unemployment happened toward the end of the recession period, according to the National Bureau of Economic Recovery.

“Unemployment tends to be a lagging indicator,” Singletary said. “We are seeing this huge spike up front. We can’t really say what will happen going forward.”

April’s labor force participation rate — the percentage of people 16 years and older with jobs or looking for work — dropped from 64.2 percent to 63.9 percent, the largest over-the-month participation rate decline on record, and the lowest participation rate for Idaho since mid-2017.

Four industry sectors saw over-the-month decreases of 10 percent or more in April — leisure and hospitality (-42.3 percent), other services (-24.5 percent), information (-18.9 percent) and education and health services (-12.8 percent).

These four sectors include many establishments most affected by COVID-19 safety measures including hotels and restaurants, ski resorts and golf courses, repair shops, salons, movie theaters, schools and non-emergency health care services.

Natural resources was the only industry sector to show any payroll gains with an increase of 100 jobs.

Regular unemployment insurance benefit payments were up 627.8 percent from a weekly average of $1,676,419 one year ago to a weekly average payout of $12,201,799 in April 2020. The number of claimants increased by 752.7 percent to a weekly average of 42,266 from 4,957 one year ago.

Nationally, unemployment reached 14.7 percent in April. The number of unemployed persons rose by 15.9 million to 23.1 million in April.

One year earlier, the national unemployment rate was 3.6 percent, while the number of unemployed reached 5.9 million.