Though Idaho’s overall unemployment rates still are low, the latest numbers show some troubling economic news, according to the state Department of Labor. For the fourth straight month, seasonally adjusted unemployment rates rose in June, from 3.6 percent to 3.8 percent – when June usually brings rates unchanged from May – and there were 11,000-plus fewer Idahoans working in June than a year earlier in June of 2007. Nationally, unemployment is at 5.5 percent, but didn’t rise from May to June. Idaho’s increase was the “largest May-to-June increase on record,” the department reported. Overall, “Employment has not decreased this significantly since 1980.” Labor officials also said, “The number of Idaho workers without jobs increased 1,900 to 28,800, the highest number of unemployed since April 2005.” Below is the department’s full press release.

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