12/04/09

It is the first Friday of the month and the latest unemployment numbers are out. The unemployment numbers did push their way up last month for the state of Idaho, but not a whole lot at 9.1 percent, up from 9.0 in October for the Magic Valley

Idaho Department of Labor Regional Economist Jan Rosier says, "The Twin Falls Jerome micropolitan area did go up this time, fairly sizable it went up .8 of a percent, so your looking at 7.8% unemployment still quite a bit lower than the state."

In October the unemployment stay level for Jerome and Twin at just 7 percent; but several seasonal lay offs happened in November to kick it up.

Rosier says, "A good part of why we went up this time was just the fact that Seneca, one of the larger employers did do their major layoffs. We typically would see food processing do periodic layoffs this time of year anyway."

As far as Dell goes it still hasn't quite shown up on the radar, but it is expected to.

She says, "Dell has not hit the radar yet, certainly they laid off in the target week we look for the unemployment rate, and so they did lay off the eleventh which was Veterans Day."

For the Sun Valley area their high unemployment number came down just a bit thanks to ski season starting up, it came down from nearly 11 percent to 10.3.

For the eastern Magic Valley, the Mini-Cassia area did see a jump from 5.4 to 7 percent; but it may go down in January thanks to a restart of a company in that area.

According to Roesier, "They will have Pacific Ethanol starting back up in January so they should see their unemployment drop even more."