February brought better job news for Lake County and its neighbors. According to the latest South Dakota Department of Labor statistics, Lake County gained 125 more jobs in February than it had in January. That brings our unemployment rate down three ticks to 5.5%.
That job gain represents a 2.1% increase in folks at work in Lake County. By that metric, among our neighbors, we were outperformed by Miner County (2.7% more jobs) and Brookings County (3.4% more jobs).
Brookings is still the area leader in keeping people employed. Their unemployment rate went down a tick to 4.2% in February. Unemployment is highest in Moody County, which still saw a drop from 7.3% in January to 7.1% in February.
Minnehaha and McCook both saw unemployment increase by two tenths of a percentage point. Both counties saw meager job creation outpaced by the increase in the number of people actively seeking work.
In our countdown to the end of the Forward Madison five-year-plan, Lake County is still 935 jobs short of the job-creation goal the Lake Area Improvement Corporation set for itself in October 2006. But notice: if that 2.1% job growth rate could continue each month, we'd hit that goal by September and have over 7500 jobs by December!
Now let's not mess that trend up by firing teachers because of state budget cuts....
Thank you LAIC!
Wait—show me the link on that, Michael. Which 125 jobs were created, and by whom?
If you blame all of the bad on LAIC, then all good must come from them too.
Au contraire, Michael! Those are different claims. The LAIC said it would increase the number of jobs in Lake County by 400, to 7065 by the end of this year. The current employment numbers demonstrate they have not succeeded in achieving that goal. Perfectly logical.
The February data show 125 new jobs in Lake County. The data say nothing about who created them. To thank the LAIC for those 125 jobs, without further information, makes about as much sense as thanking the LAIC for the snow we had in February.
Now, I am open to that information. Who hired in February? What hiring incentives or other assistance did they get from the LAIC? Show me the links, and I will say thank you.