Oregon Public Broadcasting

Idaho’s unemployment rate jumped to a 22-year high in May: 7.8 percent. 

State Labor Department spokesman Bob Fick says the rate went up eight-tenths of a percentage point in May.

He says that came as a surprise because April’s jobless rate was unchanged.

Fick says that turns out to be the exception to a long string of monthly increases.

Bob Fick: “April may not have been as steady as we originally thought and there was still creeping unemployment. Clearly, the state’s not out of the woods in this recession."

Fick says Idaho’s manufacturing sector is still weak and construction jobs grew at a slower than usual rate.

Nine of Idaho’s 44 counties had double-digit unemployment in May. The jobless rate in the Boise area jumped more than one percentage point to 9.6 percent.