Economy Watch: Linn County's Jobless Rate Slightly Better Than Iowa Average

The jobless rate in Linn County is slightly better than the state average, but both local and statewide unemployement numbers are declining ever so slightly, according to new figures from Iowa Workforce Development.

Iowa's unemployment rate dropped to 6 percent in October, according to an article from the Quad City Business Journal. In Linn County, unemployment dropped to 5.7 percent.

For Linn County that represents a .1 percent improvement over the last year, while for the state it represents .2 percent improvement.

George Lake, the president of Marion Economic Development Company, said this pattern of slow progress on the job market is likely to continue as the two political parties fail to cooperate on jobs and the economy.

"Until both political parties grow up and work to the betterment of our country instead of the detrement to the other party, our nation is going to flounder," he said.

Still, while job growth is slow, Iowa and Linn County are fairing very well when compared to the national average, which dipped to an even 9 percent earlier this month.

But the numbers are more complicated than they seem. It is true that 2,300 jobs were added in October in Iowa, but many more jobs have been lost over the year.

Iowa has lost 3,000 government jobs this year, 3,500 financial jobs this year and 1,400 local government jobs in the last month alone, according to the Quad City Business Journal article.

When you look at the data from Linn County over the last year you can see what looks like job losses through the year. The figures bounce back and forth, sometimes as much as a half a percent in a month — a strange trend that suggests that job losses may have been as significant as any job gains.

However, like most bad economic news, it's worse than it seems, at least according to some analysts.

An analyst at the Iowa Policy Project pointed out that more than 15,000 people have left the workforce altogether last year, meaning these numbers would be worse if a considerable amount of people haven't simply given up on finding a job.

"This means that while there are fewer unemployed Iowans looking for work than there were a year ago, a much larger portion of the working-age population has given up on the labor market altogether," Noga O’Connor, a research associate at the Iowa Policy Project, told the Business Journal.

So it might be a slow march towards full employment, but on the whole, Iowa is fairing well with the rate we have now, compared to the national average and states like Nevada, California and Michigan, which have rates well over 10 percent.

Numbers are cold and can't describe the effects of unemployment. How do you think fellow Marion residents have been fairing?