Category Archives: Employment News

Engineering Careers Among Best Paid Occupations

Interested in a career building the infrastructure or machines that are the backbone of modern technology? Or working to expand that frontier? If engineering is the career path for you, it is among the best paid occupations in the nation and Idaho compared with other occupations.

Depending on the specialization, in Idaho engineers earn a median from $32 to $57 per hour. As a group, it is among the fastest growing occupations in Idaho. The field is projected to grow by almost 10 percent from 2016 to 2026, adding 1,100 jobs with another 7,400 potential job opportunities as engineers retire or leave the occupation.

Read more about engineering on the BLS website.

Learn about other career options in JobScape.

Idaho Department of Labor

Around Idaho: Economic Activity in December 2018

Information provided in this article is from professional sources, news releases, weekly and daily newspapers, television and other media.

Northern Idaho
North Central Idaho
Southwestern Idaho
South Central Idaho
Southeastern
Eastern Idaho

 

NORTHERN IDAHO – Benewah, Bonner, Boundary, Kootenai & Shoshone counties

Bonner County

  • The YMCA of the Inland Northwest acquired Sandpoint West Athletic Club, with the intent of turning the health club into a new YMCA branch. Source: Spokane Journal of Business

Kootenai County

  • The city of Coeur d’Alene moved forward with a proposal to create an urban renewal district around the Kootenai Health hospital campus. The city council expressed concern about the cramped hospital corridor and noted that without efforts to consolidate properties around Kootenai Health and creating space to allow the hospital to grow, the hospital could be forced to move. Source: Coeur d’Alene Press
  • The Idaho Transportation Department will fund a one-year study on traffic management in Kootenai County, which will examine the viability of a regional traffic management center. The Kootenai Metropolitan Planning Organization will manage the study. Source: Coeur d’Alene Press
  • The Post Falls Planning and Zoning Commission approved a special use permit for the construction of a UPS distribution facility next to single-family homes in east Post Falls. The commission approved the permit after neighbors voiced their concerns about the potential noise and traffic that the distribution center would generate. Source: Coeur d’Alene Press

Openings

  • Terre Coffee and Bakery in Coeur d’Alene

Sam.Wolkenhauer@labor.idaho.gov, regional economist
Idaho Department of Labor
(208) 457-8789 ext. 4451

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Demystifying Idaho’s Unemployment Rate

Idaho’s seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was 2.6 percent for November 2018, the most recent data available. This is the 15th consecutive month that Idaho’s rate has been at or below the low rate of 3 percent. But what does 3 percent employment mean? Three percent of what?

The answer to what the unemployment rate means and how it’s determined is best understood within the context of the numbers that are also reported with it each month. The unemployment rate is a figure that measures the unemployed segment of the labor force, which is itself a subgroup of the civilian population and one of a few terms that describe different states of people in the population and their relationship with work and the economy.

The major subgroups of the larger civilian population include the labor force, employed and unemployed. The relationship among these various groups provide the basic measures of the participation rate and unemployment rate.

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Census Bureau Releases New Data on Idaho Cities, Towns from 2013-2017

American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates

Idaho’s slight increase in the workforce, a rise in median household income, an increase in median gross rent and a decrease in the number of persons living below the poverty level are just a few of the many statistics released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Census Bureau’s 2013–2017 American Community Survey produces a rolling sample of estimates on more than 40 social, economic and housing characteristics for U.S. cities, towns, counties and other geographies, regardless of their population size. It is the only source for comprehensive data for 38 of Idaho’s 44 counties and 198 incorporated cities.

Narrative profiles offering short analytic reports on all 40 sets of data for the nation, states, counties, places and census tracts can be accessed from the U.S. Census website at https://www.census.gov/acs/www/data/data-tables-and-tools/narrative-profiles/2017/

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Around Idaho: Economic Activity in November 2018

Information provided in this article is from professional sources, news releases, weekly and daily newspapers, television and other media.

Northern Idaho
North Central Idaho
Southwestern Idaho
South Central Idaho
Southeastern
Eastern Idaho

 

NORTHERN IDAHO – Benewah, Bonner, Boundary, Kootenai & Shoshone counties

Kootenai County

  • Kootenai County has started construction on a new transit center in the Riverstone development in Coeur d’Alene. The transit center will be located on a four-acre parcel, which is owned jointly by the county and the Coeur d’Alene Tribe. The center is expected to open in the summer of 2019. Source: Spokane Journal of Business
  • Construction has started on a new medical building in Hayden. The $2 million facility will house a new office of the North Idaho Eye Institute, which also has offices in Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls. Source: Spokane Journal of Business
  • The Coeur d’Alene Casino Resort Hotel has begun a $15 million renovation project, which involves an update and improvement of both the gaming and entertainment facilities at the casino. A spokesperson for the casino said the improvements would be completed by March of 2019. Source: Spokane Journal of Business

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Explore Careers that Bring Ideas from Prototype to Market

Some of the best paying and best prospective occupations in Idaho are associated with bringing ideas into reality – creating prototypes and manufacturing the product for the market.

Domingo Angeles from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics provides a national perspective on these occupations and their outlook. While Angeles uses the design and manufacture of automobiles as his example, Idaho companies engaged in the manufacturing and design of all manner of products pull together the same mix of occupations to staff the teams that put in the hard, collaborative work to bring ideas to market.

In Angeles’ article, he identified careers related to developing prototypes include software developers, graphic designers, mechanical and electrical engineers and industrial designers. Table 1 provides employment, wage, projected openings and typical education levels for each occupation on a national level.

Table 1a shows similar data for Idaho.

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Around Idaho: Economic Activity in October 2018

Information provided in this article is from professional sources, news releases, weekly and daily newspapers, television and other media.

Northern Idaho
North Central Idaho
Southwestern Idaho
South Central Idaho
Southeastern
Eastern Idaho

NORTHERN IDAHO – Benewah, Bonner, Boundary, Kootenai & Shoshone counties

Benewah County

  • The Coeur d’Alene tribe has approved plans for a $16 million youth and family recreation center to be built on tribal land near Worley. The facility is intended to support the tribe’s mission of protecting the health and safety of their youth. Source: Spokesman Review

Kootenai County

  • Keller-Williams Coeur d’Alene is building a new $3.3 million building. With Kootenai County’s housing market enjoying phenomenal expansion in recent years, Keller Williams noted that its pool of agents has grown by 22 percent so far in 2018 alone. The agency now has 255 agents in Coeur d’Alene and has outgrown its existing office space. Source: Spokane Journal of Business

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Idaho’s Projected Robust Job Growth May Challenge Labor Supply

Idaho’s economy has been one of the most dynamic among all the states in recent years. Over the past five years, Idaho has consistently been at the top of the charts in terms of job creation, and only Utah has created jobs as quickly. Recently, the Idaho Department of Labor completed a new round of labor market projections which anticipate that Idaho’s strong rate of job creation will continue into the foreseeable future.

This new analysis forecasts that Idaho’s total employment will reach 840,000 by 2026, up from a 2016 total of about 735,000. This amounts to approximately 105,000 new jobs created in 10 years, which represents a 14.4 percent increase. This indicates that Idaho is expected to substantially outpace the rest of the nation in job creation. Equivalent projections from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projected total U.S. employment to grow by only 7.7 period in the same time period (1). Continue reading →

Around Idaho: Economic Activity in September 2018

Information provided in this article is from professional sources, news releases, weekly and daily newspapers, television and other media.

Northern Idaho
North Central Idaho
Southwestern Idaho
South Central Idaho
Southeastern
Eastern Idaho

NORTHERN IDAHO – Benewah, Bonner, Boundary, Kootenai & Shoshone counties

Boundary County

  • Seven Seeds Coffee Roasters opened in Bonners Ferry. The company specifically sources its coffee beans from impoverished regions of southeastern Asia, where the coffee can become a cash crop for impoverished farmers. Source: Bonners Ferry Herald

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Idaho Labor’s Annual Wage Report is Valuable Resource

What does the average machinist in Idaho make? How many people are working in Idaho as diesel mechanics? What is the entry-level wage for fast food cooks? What’s a reasonable wage range for carpenters? Would I get higher pay as a registered nurse working in Boise or in Idaho Falls? Would I earn more as a plumber or as an electrician?

Once a year, the Idaho Department of Labor publishes answers to those questions and thousands of others in the form of the Occupational Employment and Wage Survey (OEWS).

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