Over 22 thousand Idahoans were part-time workers last year

WASHINGTON D.C. (KIFI/KIDK)-New federal statistics indicate Idaho's real unemployment rate in 2019 was 6%, significantly lower than the 7.2% national rate.

The figure represents "labor underutilization", which includes the unemployment, those who are employed part-time, and those who only marginally attached to the labor force.

According to the U.S., Bureau of Labor Statistics, that rate is not much different than the previous year.

Idaho had 26,000 unemployed residents in 2019 according to the CPS. In addition, there were 22,400 workers who were employed part time for economic reasons (also known as involuntary part time).

These individuals were working part time because of slack work or business conditions or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

In 2019, the number of individuals considered to be marginally attached to the labor force in Idaho was 4,400. People marginally attached to the labor force are not working, but indicate that they would like to work, are available to work, and have looked for work at some time during the past 12 months, even though they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities. In the United States, the number of people marginally attached totaled 1.4 million in 2019.

Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, are persons who are not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. In 2019, there were 800 discouraged workers in Idaho, accounting for 18.2 percent of the marginally attached in the state. The U-4 measure, which adds discouraged workers to the number of the unemployed (expressed as a percentage of the labor force plus the number of discouraged workers), was 3.0 percent in Idaho, significantly lower than the 3.9 percent rate for the nation.