POST FALLS - She's not budging.

Kootenai County's unemployment rate remained unchanged from June to July at 11.7 percent, according to a report released on Friday by the Idaho Department of Labor.

The rate has been stuck around 11 percent for the past several months.

Alivia Body, IDOL's regional economist, said seasonal gains in the leisure and hospitality sector were essentially offset by declines in local government employment, creating a stagnant rate.

"Typically summer months have lower rates, but there's just not much going on," Body said. "It remains a tough job market. With the market the way it is, businesses are reluctant (to increase jobs)."

Body said initial local unemployment claims decreased from 1,214 to 1,145 (5.7 percent) from June to July. The local IDOL office had about 500 job openings in the past month, 115 of those (23 percent) were administrative/support services positions.

"There is activity going on, which is a good sign," Body said.

However, it is estimated that more than 500 people in North Idaho will run out of benefits payments on Jan. 7.

The unemployment rate in Post Falls dropped from 12.9 percent to 12.3 and Coeur d'Alene from 12 to 11.9.

The state's rate remained unchanged in July at 9.4 percent. Benewah County's rate increased from 14.6 to 15 percent.

While the state rate remains three-tenths of a point above the national rate, it matched Idaho's rate for July 2010, marking the first month since September 2007 that current rates did not exceed year-earlier levels.

More than 2,600 workers left the labor force as total employment also fell for a second month in a row, dropping another 1,800 to just over 690,100. The number of people without jobs was down 800 to just under 71,300. It was the 14th straight month that more than 70,000 Idahoans could not find jobs.

Private employers added 3,200 jobs to their payrolls in July, well below the 5,000 they added from June to July 2010 but about 500 more than the average June-July increase over the previous 10 years. Their new hires still reflected replacing workers who quit, retired or left for some other reason, but the totals were ahead of both 2009 and 2010, the worst years on record for monthly new hiring.

Better-than-average performance occurred in every sector but information, education, health care and retail trade. Health care, which rode out the recession without job losses, continued to gain jobs but at only half the average for June to July. Retail trade also generated only half the new jobs it should have, reinforcing concerns that general economic problems are constraining consumer spending - a key component of the American economy.

July marked the 10th straight month that private sector employment has been running ahead of the year-earlier levels while overall employment continues to lag behind the previous year, indicating a shift in the state's labor market problems from the private to the government sector.

State and local governments dropped 7,800 jobs from June to July, primarily at public schools and colleges for the summer recess. That was 600 more than between June and July in the 2001 and 2007 recessions and 400 more than the 10-year average. But it dropped total government employment below 111,000 for the first time since July 2007, and it was the 14th straight month that current government employment has been below the year-earlier total.

The combination has kept overall job growth flat for the past 13 months. Total jobs - government and private - have ranged from .6 percent above the year-earlier level in February to .6 percent below in July 2010. This July nonfarm jobs were .3 percent below July 2010.

More than 27,000 jobless workers collected more than $26.6 million in unemployment benefits in July - split almost evenly between regular and federal extended benefits. That was down from more than 30,000 receiving nearly $29 million in June. Nearly 11,000 workers have exhausted all their benefits - regular and federal extended - without finding a job.

The Conference Board, a business think tank, found three unemployed workers for every job opening in Idaho in July, down from nearly four unemployed workers for every opening two months earlier.

Twenty-one of Idaho's 44 counties recorded lower rates in July than June while 23 saw rates rise. Nineteen counties posted double-digit unemployment rates in July, up from 18 in June.