Last updated on 2011.01.03
That darned Madison Daily Leader beat me to the local unemployment numbers for November!
According to the South Dakota Department of Labor, Lake County saw unemployment rise in the run-up to the holidays, from 4.6% in October to 5.0% in November. 70 people left the workforce, but 90 jobs ended, leaving a net increase of 20 unemployed people. After Thanksgiving, 325 Lake County workers out of a workforce of 6540 were looking for work.
In a way, that's better than last year, when the November 2009 report found unemployment at 5.2% in Lake County, with 350 people wanting jobs. But in November 2009, Lake County also had 115 more jobs, 6330 total.
Those job losses push our LAIC's Forward Madison jobs goal further out of reach. Four years ago, the LAIC promised to maintain a status quo trend that promised 400 new jobs by 2012. We are now 450 jobs down from where we were when Forward Madison started...meaning the LAIC has 13 months to create 850 jobs in Lake County. (Superior Homes of Watertwon will add 27 to 32 jobs over the next several months.)
Around the septa-county area, unemployment ticked up everywhere but Miner County, where the jobless rate dropped from 5.6% to 5.0%. Miner County jobs stayed steady, but ten people left the workforce, meaning fewer Howard friends and neighbors actively looking for work.
Brookings County is still the area leader in keeping people working, with unemployment increasing just a tenth of a point to 3.6%. But Brookings County saw 100 new jobs created in November. Take out Miner as mentioned above, and every other neighboring county, even Minnehaha, saw jobs decrease in November.
Bonus Economic Note: The Bureau of Economic Analysis reports we Americans made $39.3 billion more in disposable personal income in November than we did in October. And dispose of it we did: we racked up $68.9 billion more in personal consumption expenditures.