December jobless rates drop in 27 of Idaho’s 44 counties

January 21, 2012

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped from November to December in 27 of Idaho’s 44 counties, following the decline in the statewide rate to 8.4 percent. The number of counties with double-digit rates fell to 13 from 14 in November and 17 a year earlier while six counties had jobless rates of 6 percent or less, up from five in November and only two in December 2010. Caribou County, where there were recent mining layoffs, was the only county with a higher rate at 7.6 percent this past December than in December 2010, when the rate was 6.4 percent. Kootenai County, the one metropolitan area in the state that had posted double-digit unemployment rates for 19 straight months, dropped half a percentage point in December to 9.8 percent. Adams County continued to have the highest rate at 17 percent in December while Franklin County again had the lowest at 5 percent. Fifteen mostly rural counties had average 2011 unemployment rates in double-digits, led by Adams at 16.6 percent. But that compared to 18 counties in double-digits in 2010. In Boundary County, one of the 15, the preliminary unemployment rate for December was 11.7 percent, compared to 12.9 percent in November. The preliminary average for the county for 2011 is 14-percent, compared to 15.6 percent in 2010, but up from the 12-percent posted in 2009. Owyhee County had the lowest average rate at 5.3 percent, up a tenth of its 2010 lowest-in-the-state rate.