For the first time in nearly five years, Flathead County’s unemployment rate has dropped to 7 percent, signaling a rebirth of local growth.

Jobless numbers have been steadily improving in recent months, with the unemployment rate at 8.4 percent in April and dropping to 7 percent in May.

In addition to the normal summer upswing in hiring, new businesses also are hiring, Flathead Job Service Supervisor Laura Gardner pointed out.

Cabela’s has begun hiring workers for its 42,000-square-foot retail store in north Kalispell that will open this fall, and the $8.5 million Hilton Homewood Suites in north Kalispell also is assembling its staff.

“This is a pretty exciting time,” she said. “It’s not just the normal businesses that are hiring. Construction still is not where we’d like it to be, but there’s definitely a much better feel” toward an improved local economy.

The Job Service office in Kalispell currently has 430 job openings posted, a significant increase from roughly 300 jobs available just a few months ago.

It was the fall of 2008 when the unemployment rate began slipping, Gardner said.

In October 2008 the local jobless rate was 6.2 percent; a month later it was 7.7 percent as the national recession began having a significant effect on job growth.

As the economy continued to worsen for the Flathead, the unemployment rate reached double digits and remained stubbornly high for several years. In May 2010, the jobless rate was 11.5 percent in Flathead; in May 2011, it was 11.2 percent; and a year ago in May, it had improved to 9.2 percent.

Patrick Barkey, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana, said growth in health care, manufacturing and professional business services are having an impact on an improved economic picture in Flathead County.

But, he cautioned, “it doesn’t mean we’re back to the 2005 level” of growth.

“The Flathead is returning to growth because things have been down for quite a while,” Barkey said. “It was kind of a deep hole, but it’s behind us.”

The manufacturing industry here is a particularly bright spot, he said, largely because of its diversity. The firearms industry is fueling the growth, but so is the semiconductor business and other manufacturers.

The professional business services sector, which includes consultants, architects and a wide array of service providers, has grown as companies have been able to contract their services both locally and out of the area.

“There’s growth in fairly decently paying sectors,” Barkey noted.

Tourism brings the usual seasonal upswing in hiring, but for tourism to help the economy grow, it requires growth in facilities, he explained.

“It’s not just existing businesses being busy” with tourist traffic, he said. “It’s investment in infrastructure.”

The proposed boutique hotel in Whitefish is an example of that pending growth in tourism infrastructure.

Barkey said he doesn’t track unemployment rates too closely because they’re based more on models than actual data. Even so, the improved rate is “consistent with the data we have,” he said.

“Looking at the big picture stuff, clearly it takes a growing economy to bring the unemployment rate down,” Barkey said.

Neighboring counties also saw improvement in their rates. Lincoln County went from 14.3 percent unemployment in April to 11.5 percent in May. Sanders County improved from 12.2 percent to 10 percent. Lake County improved from 7.6 percent to 6.5 percent.

Statewide, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell slightly to 5.4 percent in May, down by 0.1 percentage point from April, continuing a downward trend that began in mid-2010. Total employment statewide increased by 1,740 jobs in the last month, the largest monthly job increase of 2013, according to the state Department of Labor.

Individual county percentages are not seasonally adjusted.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.