County jobless rate trending lower

JIM FALL/DAILY FORUM
More local workers are driving nails — and stocking merchandise, manning assembly lines, and logging on to office computers — these days as Nodaway County’s jobless rate continues to fall. The latest report indicates an unemployment rate of 3.5 percent for the past month. That’s even with October’s mark and matches the lowest rate recorded in the county since Nov. 2007.

The weather might be somewhat out of whack, but the good news of Christmas is right on schedule so far as the jobs picture in Nodaway County is concerned.

The unemployment rate for the county matched its lowest level in eight years during November, according to figures released Wednesday by the state Department of Economic Development’s Missouri Economic Research and Information Center.

The most current figures for local joblessness indicate an unemployment rate of 3.5 percent during the past month, consistent with the county’s October mark and matching the lowest rate recorded in the county since a reading of 3.3 percent was achieved in Nov. 2007.

“We are actually pretty close to full employment now,” Kim Mildward, director of workforce development at the Northwest Missouri Regional Council of Governments, said this week.

The growth in jobs in the county can been seen in almost every employment classification — “manufacturing, food services, actually services of all types,” Mildward said.

The latest statewide report places Missouri’s unemployment level at 4.7 percent for November, the lowest level the state has recorded since April 2006, and also lower than the national average of 5 percent for November.

The overall unemployment rate for the Missouri Economic Development Council’s Northwest region is 3.8 percent and affects 5,050 of the area’s 134,622-member civilian labor force.

Worth and Holt counties have the lowest unemployment rates in the 18-county Northwest Region. Worth County has the lowest rate in the region at 2.4 percent, and Holt County stands at 2.9 per cent.

Gentry and Putnam counties are close behind at 3.1 percent, followed by Livingston County at 3.2 percent.

The highest unemployment rate in the region is Linn County at 5.6 percent, down from 6.1 percent during October, followed by Sullivan County at 5 percent.

Unemployment rates for the other counties in the Northwest Region include Andrew County, 3.4 percent; Atchison County, 3.9 percent; Buchanan County, 3.9 percent; Caldwell County, 3.6 percent; Clinton County, 3.7 percent; Daviess County, 3.3 percent; and DeKalb County, 3.5 percent.

The jobless rate for Grundy County is 3.9 percent, followed by Harrison County at 4.2 percent and Putnam County at 3.1 percent.

According to statistical reports from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Nodaway County, which traditionally has boasted one of the lower jobless rates in the state, enjoyed its best-ever unemployment level at 0.6 percent, recorded in October of 1999.

That mark was almost equaled the next month when the number was 0.7 percent in November 1999.

The county’s highest jobless rate recorded since January of 1990 was 9.1 percent in July, 2010. Other high level marks were set in November 2013 at 8.4 percent and 8.3 percent in July of 2013.

Nodaway County’s unemployment rate began 2015 at 5.4 percent in January and reached its highest level during the year at 6.7 percent in July.