Lake County Workforce Shrinks, Dropping November Unemployment to 5.9%

Unemployment in Lake County dropped to 5.9% in November, down a full percentage point from the revised 6.9% figure from October.

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean more of our neighbors are working. October is traditionally our best jobs month, but we shed more jobs than usual in November. 100 Lake County jobs went poof last month. Luckily for our stats, 180 people went poof from the workforce, producing a net decrease in unemployment from 480 to 400.

So, for those of you keeping score at home, Lake County is now down to 6360 jobs, down 325 from October 2006, when the Lake Area Improvement Corporation declared its goal of creating 400 new jobs in five years. We thus have 725 jobs to create in two years. Let's get to work!

Looking around the septa-county region, our neighbors in Moody and Miner are having a tougher time finding work, with respective jobless rates of 6.8% and 6.3%. But Miner County actually added five jobs in November and saw fifteen people join its workforce. Brookings County had the best unemployment rate in the neighborhood, creeping up just a tick in November to 3.5%. Last month Brookings managed to add 125 new jobs, only to have that number outpaced by 160 people joing the workforce (maybe that's where Lake County's workers went?).

Lake County's unemployment rate was the 14th-highest among all counties in the state. Buffalo, Shannon, Jackson, and Dewey counties are the only areas reporting official unemployment rates in double digits.

Yankton is back at the top of the heap of big towns where it's hard to find work, with November unemployment at 7.3% (which still beats the pants off the national rate of 10%). The cities with the lowest unemployment numbers: Pierre (2.9%), Aberdeen (3.2%), Vermillion (3.4%), and Brookings (3.5%).