Fort Hall Jobless Rate 52 Percent

The jobless rate on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation is about 52 percent. When winter comes, it reaches 65 percent.

But Eric LaPointe, the Bureau of Indian Affairs superintendent at Fort Hall, said even that rate isn’t as high as some reservations.

The latest precise jobless figures at Fort Hall were compiled in 1995. Another survey is planned in December. LaPointe said conditions haven’t changed much on the eastern Idaho reservation in the last 10 years.

He came to Fort Hall about six months ago from Browning, Mont. He said the unemployment rate on the Blackfeet Reservation gets as high as 80 percent in winter.

By comparison, 1995 unemployment rates for North Idaho Indian tribes were Coeur d’Alene, 55 percent; Kootenai, 19 percent and Nez Perce, 62 percent.

That’s before tribal gambling in some locations generated a number of Indian jobs.

LaPointe estimates that 10-20 jobs may have been added at the Fort Hall tribal bingo hall since the 1995 survey. But that has done little to compensate for the 100 tribal jobs lost when the J.R. Simplot Co. closed the Gay Mine on the reservation in 1993.