Idaho job market is a qualified success

Jobless numbers in Idaho have hit lows that must have some companies considering press gangs as a recruitment tool.

Not press, as in media, but press as in Royal Navy practice of two centuries ago. Then, job “openings” could be quickly filled by a press gang of ship toughs dispatched to roust the able-bodied from the bars around the harbor. And off to sea they went. Crude, but effective.

Some of those bars may have held more patrons then than some Idaho counties do unemployed today.

In Camas County, for example, only 10 were jobless last month. In Clark County, only 15. Oneida County, 46.

Statewide, the February unemployment rate dipped to 2.8 percent, an achievement only a handful of other states can match. Traditionally, a rate of 4 percent was considered full employment. Idaho has fuller employment.

Rates are not quite so low in the five Panhandle counties — they range from a low of 3.8 percent in Kootenai to a high of 6.3 percent in Benewah — but fewer than 4,000 were jobless as of the end of the month out of a total workforce of more than 105,000.

Monday, says state labor economist Kathryn Tacke, there were almost 1,700 openings in the region. The average wage offered was $9.46.

Tacke says some long-time employers are having a hard time adjusting to the wage expectations of first-time job applicants. One recently groused that when he graduated from high school, he took a job for $2.40 an hour.

That was 1969. Tacke says she adjusted for inflation the purchasing power of that $2.40, and figured the equivalent today would be around $10 an hour.

She says unhappy employees don’t have to settle for a paycheck in a dead-end job. They want benefits, perhaps some help with education, and the possibility of advancement. As more employers experience higher turnover, some are responding with such incentives, she says.

North Idaho, like Spokane County, use to trumpet the availability of a skilled, low-cost workforce when recruiting new companies. There’s not even an echo today.

“It’s an amazing thing to bring up those unemployment levels,” say Steve Griffitts, president of Jobs Plus, the nonprofit group charged with recruiting new companies to Kootenai County.

He says Jobs Plus no longer casts the wide net it did a few years ago, when any job might do. Instead, he is trying to incrementally establish the area as a home for, perhaps, biotechnology or software development. With those companies and those kinds of jobs in the community, he can then go to local high schools and North Idaho Community College show the opportunities open to students who have taken an extra year of math and science.

“I want them to be more qualified,” Griffitts says.

Idaho Commerce & Labor Director Roger Madsen had the same message when he released the unemployment numbers Friday.

“Having our employment rates driven below 3 percent only underscores the importance of expanding and enhancing our training and education programs,” he said.

Griffitts says he makes clear the manpower pressures when he talks to companies interested in the area. But his job is to keep the pipeline of potential newcomers full.

“I’m not going to be a slave of economic conditions whether they’re poor or whether they’re great,” he says.

Tacke notes that even in the larger counties of southern Idaho where unemployment rates are particularly low, labor constraints do not seem to have slowed economic expansion.

Listings in the Panhandle are down somewhat from the same time last year, she says, but the last three years were extraordinary.

There are still a wide variety of jobs available in health care, retail, and construction, says Tacke, who adds that manufacturing should be attracting more attention from those just entering the workforce.

“A lot of them are passing up some great opportunities,” she says.

For skilled, willing workers, 2.8 percent unemployment is 100 percent opportunity.