Early retirement trends decrease jobless rate
The Idaho Department of Labor reported the month of December had the lowest jobless rate since 2008. The adjusted unemployment rate fell another two-tenths of a percentage point to 3.7 percent.
Total employment edged upward by 300 to cross 743,000 for the first time while unemployment fell by 1,600. The state’s total labor force dropped by 1,300 to under 772,000 – the lowest level sinceJanuary 2012. Regional Economist Chris St. Jeor said the decrease in the workforce reflects the increase in early retirements.
“What we are seeing is, people who are wanting jobs are finding them faster and the number of people on unemployment and insurance is going down every single month for quite a while now,” he said. “So there are jobs, but many of those are due to the rapid rate of early retirement for baby boomers.”
Since August, the state’s unemployment rate has dropped a full percentage point, setting a preliminary annual jobless rate for 2014 at 4.6 percent, down 1.6 percentage points from 2013 and the lowest annual rate since 2007’s 3 percent.
Idaho’s annual unemployment rate for 2014 and other employment estimates will be revised in March based on additional data gathered over the past year. This revision process – referred to as benchmarking – will delay the release of January employment estimates and the revised data untilMarch 13.
The national unemployment rate decreased by two-tenths to 5.6 percent, keeping Idaho’s rate below the national rate for over 13 years.
Idaho’s preliminary estimate for average number of jobs in 2014 was just over 654,000, less than 1,000 below the pre-recession peak in 2007. Nationally, total jobs were nearly 1 million higher in 2014 than in 2007.
For the seventh straight month, there were no Idaho counties with double-digit unemployment rates. Only six counties posted higher rates in December than in November – Benewah, Franklin, Butte, Gem, Payette and Clearwater.
All five metropolitan areas saw rates decline from November and none posted a rate over 4.5 percent.
