Idaho’s unemployment rate is now down to 3.5 percent.
The figure has inched south from 3.6 percent in February.
According to the Idaho Department of Labor, this is the 78th straight month with labor force gains. The total labor force participation rate in Idaho – that’s the percentage of people over 16 holding down a job or looking for work – dropped a tenth of a percent to a solid 64 percent.
Of 23,600 jobs posted online last month, 4,200 were classified as “hard to fill.” 14 percent of those hard-to-fill jobs are in the healthcare field.
Half of Idaho’s 44 counties had an unemployment rate worse than the state’s rate of 3.5 percent. Madison County has the lowest unemployment of any county in Idaho at 2.1 percent, with Clearwater County coming in as one of the highest with 9 percent.
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