SHERIDAN — While many businesses are still advertising job openings, a recently reported decline in the local unemployment rate has generally been good news for local businesses, according to Dixie Johnson, CEO of the Sheridan County Chamber of Commerce.
Johnson said multiple businesses have asked the Chamber to remove job listings as positions have been filled — sometimes after months of waiting and searching for the right hires.
“We’ve started to see a little bit of a decline in the number of new postings we’re getting, and we’ve had a few businesses contact us because they finally filled a position or two,” Johnson said. “Hopefully, that means businesses are finally filling those vacancies.”
The county’s unemployment rate decreased from 2.5% in September 2021 to 2.3% in October 2021, according to recently released statistics from the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services. The number of unemployed individuals in Sheridan County declined from 399 in September to 367 in October, according to the department.
This number looks especially good compared to the unemployment numbers from a year ago, according to David Bullard, senior economist with the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services. In October 2020, 3.6% of Sheridan County residents — or 585 — were unemployed.
The decreasing unemployment numbers in Sheridan County follow statewide and national trends, according to Bullard. The statewide unemployment rate declined from 2.7% in September to 2.5% in October 2021. Nationally, the unemployment rate declined from 4.6% to 4.3%.
On a statewide level, unemployment numbers are determined by the U.S. Census Bureau, which sends surveyors to people’s houses to check on their employment status, Bullard said. Unemployment numbers decrease when survey respondents say they have recently found a job, or decided to stop searching for one.
Bullard said the bureau has heard from people who have found jobs but also heard from many others who have simply decided to stop looking at this time.
“At a statewide level, a large part of the decrease is people dropping out of the labor force entirely,” Bullard said. “Rather than finding jobs, they are simply not looking right now. The estimates suggest that, of the decrease in unemployment numbers, roughly two-thirds of those people have dropped out of the labor force entirely for now.”
Bullard said it was not unusual to see a decline in the labor force, and it was part of a natural ebb and flow. However, most times the labor force declines, it is because people moved out of the state, Bullard said. According to the census bureau, most of Wyoming’s labor force has remained in the state but simply stopped looking. There could be several reasons for that, Bullard said.
“I’m not sure we have solid data to address that, but we do hear different theories in the news,” Bullard said. “They could be dropping out due to concern for their own health or because they need to care for their children. In addition, there have been three large stimulus payments that could be impacting peoples’ willingness to jump back into the labor pool.”
Regardless, local jobs are being filled and unemployment numbers are trending in a positive direction, Bullard said. Bullard said he expects that trend to hold, although the state could see a spike in unemployment as the winter season progresses.
“Generally, the employment numbers go down in Wyoming during the winter season,” Bullard said. “Our tourism industry does have a winter season, but it’s not as big as the summer season, and the construction industry can’t continue in the winter months. So we typically see fewer people working and more people unemployed during the winter. So I certainly expect employment numbers to decrease, to a certain extent, as we get into the winter months.”
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December 04, 2021 at 01:00AM
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