Flathead hits highest unemployment in 15 years

Flathead County’s January unemployment rate hit 11.3 percent in January, its highest rate in at least 15 years.

State statistics released Wednesday showed that, of the 47,400 people in the Flathead’s labor force, more than 5,300 were out of work in January. Those numbers do not count independent contractors, people who have stopped looking for a job, or people whose hours or pay have been cut.

“I was surprised to see it go that high,” said Bill Nelson, manager of the Flathead Job Service.

Nelson said he was prepared for a jobless rate somewhere around 10 percent in the Flathead, but he could not attribute a specific sector for driving the number more than a point higher.

“It’s the large layoffs we saw” at Semitool, Plum Creek Timber and Columbia Falls Aluminum, he said, but also “just a lot of smaller ones. There’s a lot of residual effect with smaller employers, with people not going out to eat and just not buying.”

The building and construction industry was hard hit, drying up a lot of buying power that could have helped fuel cash flow in other businesses, he said.

Montana’s unemployment rate is 6.7 percent, according to figures from the state Department of Labor and Industry. That’s considerably better than the 10.3 percent unemployment the state saw in 1983, and the high rates that persisted throughout the 1980s.

Western Montana counties were the hardest hit overall in the state, led by Sanders County, with unemployment in January at a whopping 17.7 percent. Lincoln County followed close behind with unemployment at 15.6 percent. Lake County had the best report in Northwest Montana, with 10 percent unemployment.

The labor department’s numbers — including the county numbers above — are not seasonally adjusted. Federal numbers provided by the U.S. Department of Labor, on the other hand, are seasonally adjusted and put Montana’s January unemployment at a more modest 5.6 percent, two full points below the nation’s 7.6 percent jobless rate. The county’s seasonally adjusted rate is not available.

Flathead County’s numbers typically are high in January, when construction and tourism crawl to a near-stop. From 1994 through 1999, Nelson’s statistics never dipped below 9.1 percent unemployment for the month.

But in 2000 Flathead County’s January unemployment dropped to 7.1 percent, more than two points below a year earlier. And it remained relatively low. January unemployment bottomed out at 5.2 percent in 2006 before starting a slow climb.

But this year, the January rate was twice last year’s 5.6 percent.

And this year, workers’ perceptions are different, Nelson said.

“We had layoffs in the past, where people were eligible for retraining under the Trade Adjustment Assistance program,” which often applies when large numbers of workers lose their jobs due to foreign trade competition, he said.

In the past, workers who were eligible rarely took advantage of that retraining, but that is changing

“We’re getting a larger percentage of people now expressing interest in that retraining,” Nelson said. “In the past they would just hold out for their work or get a different job.”

But with only 75 job listings at the Job Service now, those chances are slim. Although up marginally from the 50 listings of a month or two ago, it’s a far cry from the 300 or more jobs that have been posted in March during years past.

“They’re taking the training now,” Nelson said. “There’s a little more sense of reality.

“They had a little more hope in the past. It seems that hope isn’t there now,” he said. “But it’s an opportunity for them, they’ll have the training and be ready when things come back.

“What we’re banking on — if this thing ends anytime soon, and some people are calling for it to end sometime this year — is hopefully they’ll be on a career track.”

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com