Idaho's unemployment rate has dropped to its lowest point since August 2008. It dropped a tenth of a percent in March to 5.2 percent.
Bob Fick is with the Idaho Department of Labor. He says the March data continues a trend that started a year and a half ago.
“We’ve seen job creation at two percent to three percent over the last 18 months, while the national rate has been about 1.5, 1.6 every month, year over year," Fick says. "So we’re creating jobs at a significant pace."
Fick says Idaho’s recovery from the Great Recession started off slowly, but has picked up over the last two years.
Construction showed the strongest job growth between February and March. That’s as the state continues to recover from the bursting of its housing bubble when the recession hit. Manufacturers also expanded in March. That combination meant more higher-paying jobs, as the goods-producing sectors of the economy average about $10,000 a year more than jobs in the service sector.
The national unemployment rate was 6.7 percent in March. Idaho's rate has been lower the national one for more than 12 years.
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