Story Created: Dec 11, 2009 at 1:17 PM MDT
Story Updated: Dec 11, 2009 at 1:17 PM MDT
Mike Ferguson, speaking Thursday in an address to the Boise City Club, said new information that has yet to be published shows the fall in the state's nonfarm employment stopped in October and then showed a slight increase in November.
"If this holds, this is the bottom," Ferguson said, The Spokesman-Review reported.
Ferguson said Idaho has been hit hard in the recession because computers, electronics, wood products and construction form a large portion of Idaho's employment picture.
"It's not time to pop the corks on the champagne bottles yet," he said, "but if we continue to see this decline arrested, I think we'll be shifting from, 'When are we going to hit the bottom?' to 'What is the path out of this?'"
With the recession, Idaho lost jobs with layoffs at Micron Technology Inc., an end to expansions by grocery store chain Albertson's, and the loss of construction jobs with the collapse of Tamarack Resort in central Idaho.
Before the downturn, Ferguson said Idaho had "a couple of decades of exceptional economic performance."
Ferguson was basing his statements on nonfarm employment numbers. Idaho's overall unemployment rate in November edged up one-tenth of a percentage point to 9.1 percent, with a record 68,800 people in the state out of work.
Over the past 12 months, there were 33,400 job losses in the state.
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Information from: The Spokesman-Review
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