Headlines should match their photos, right?
One, two, three… yesterday’s Aberdeen job fair sure doesn’t look crowded. The 175 folks laid off by Molded Fiber Glass last month must all be settled or looking elsewhere.
The photo underplays the headline, but Victoria Lusk reports that 270 job seekers dropped by the job fair yesterday to visit with 37 worker seekers. That’s 20 more potential employees but 14 fewer employers than last year’s event.
The most recent DOL stats show that in January, Brown County had 20,306 people working and 601 looking for work. That’s 2.9% unemployment. Searching “Brown County” on South Dakota’s official job service page produces 587 openings.
Historical Employment Notes: Monthly unemployment in South Dakota peaks every January: DOL stats since 1990 show that South Dakota off-loads an average of 11,900 jobs from the normal October peak to January hibernation time, leaving an average of 4,300 South Dakotans looking for work in January than were looking in October. Our unemployment rate jumps an average of 1.1 percentage points from October to January.
Looked at from the positives, the numbers of employed and available workers peak every summer, dip when school resumes, resurge a bit at harvest time, then tank in winter.
Sumpun interesting. Under Obama, coal mining jobs were 15% higher than under dumbass dubya-in spite of all the flak about environmental concerns costing coal country jobs.
When are the state’s employment stats going to actually include the reservations, which are also a part of the state? Most of the reservations, including the one I live on, has 80 percent-plus unemployment. But the state never seems to even consider that when touting its “rosy” employment stats as compared to many other areas of the country.
When you have close to 30% actual unemployment figures, it is hard to justify the 35 belly buttons you have doing the economic development paychecks. South Dakota is a failed state that drifts further and further down the drain each year of republican corruption. NOem wants to end the Meals on Wheels, Thune claims he wants to help the poor, Rounds only wonders when there will be another EB5 to get his little mitts on.
There is plenty of work to be done here that would actually be that rosy if there would be a change in direction for the state. That direction would include the reservations in those numbers as well, it is called infrastructure. A difficult word for republicans to grasp unless they can get something under the table from it.
Cory’s graph illustrates a trend of increased unemployment over the years. We obviously need to expand and diversity our economy. I hope the legislature can focus on that in 2018.
Laurisa, I’d love to see more accurate numbers on reservation unemployment and a focus from GOED on connecting Indians and jobs. The market will keep bringing jobs to Sioux Falls without any state push.
Still, I recognize there’s no one-page solution. We can’t just bus the whole unemployed population of Standing Rock to the Aberdeen job fair and divide them up among employers. We need sustainable economic activity on the reservation so people can work in their communities. What work is there to do on the reservation? What industries can we bring to the reservation to hire? Who will write those paychecks?