Lowest Unemployment Rate (living, area, population)

[mtcowgirl]

Montana is a BIG BIG place remember. And you can't really compare one area to another. Eastern Montana has a probably even LOWER rate of unemployment, in fact, the toughest problem in the majority of the state is "lots of work, no people." There is a huge oil boom going on here with no end in sight. Lots of high-paying skilled and semi-skilled jobs. and at the other end of the scale there are McDonalds that are paying signing bonuses for their help. Unfortunately, the attention is payed in the Bitterroot and Flathead valleys and around Bozeman. There is a LOT more state out here than those smaller regions. That is the one thing that is most shocking to newbies to Montana......it is SO HUGE!

[JoeJoeMan]

Hummm....so I'm wondering, if our unemployment rate is so low how come the pay is still so crappy ? Seems to me that employers are having no trouble at all finding all the cheap help they need or else they have to start paying more to get employees. So much for the law of supply and demand.

[imbobbbb]

the pay isnt so crappy everywhere.you can make plenty of money right now in baker......you'll also have to live in you're car because there is no housing.i know people who've done good in colstrip.....but if the pay wasnt good almost noone would live there.just like in wyoming it is a fact of geology that most of the energy wealth is only found in the less scenic areas.most people arent moving to the places in montana where the jobs are,they're moving where the scenery is even though they may have to work three jobs to pay the rent.there also arent really even that many jobs in the energy areas,there are just very few people.

[YOU-CANT-EAT-SCENERY]

Watch when the Real Estate and construction boom slows like it has here in California. Then the unemployment rate will go up.

[JoeJoeMan]

johns65vette wrote:

Watch when the Real Estate and construction boom slows like it has here in California. Then the unemployment rate will go up.

And what a glorious day that will be ! That should help flush out those types from the state. Hopefully there will be something left of our once lovely state that still resembles Montana, even if it ain't around here (western mt)

[YOU-CANT-EAT-SCENERY]

Originally Posted by JoeJoeMan

johns65vette wrote:


And what a glorious day that will be ! That should help flush out those types from the state. Hopefully there will be something left of our once lovely state that still resembles Montana, even if it ain't around here (western mt)

You know, for as weird as it sounds considering I'm from Ca. and would like to be in MT, I too, hope that it flushes out the "riff raff".

[JoeJoeMan]

Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeJoeMan
johns65vette wrote:


And what a glorious day that will be ! That should help flush out those types from the state. Hopefully there will be something left of our once lovely state that still resembles Montana, even if it ain't around here (western mt)

giftshopguy wrote
You know, for as weird as it sounds considering I'm from Ca. and would like to be in MT, I too, hope that it flushes out the "riff raff".

AMEN brother

[jenzebel]

The unemployment stats don't tell the whole story. People sometimes remind me of cattle; they just go along mindlessly following the herd and believing any stats put before them. It seems many people just don't know how to think critically or they would investigate and question the process and data used to create the stats.

Montana's employment scene, except for parts of Eastern Montana currently experiencing a boom, is a proliferation of minimum wage or barely above minimum wage service-type jobs and seasonal jobs. The govt uses "seasonal adjustment" to "even out" the unemployment rates over the yearly period, so there isn't a huge spike in seasonal employment shown in the stats that would more closely reflect Montana's true employment picture.

In the lovely small mountain towns that many people want to move to, waiting hand and foot on tourists is often the only game in town as far as employment is concerned and that is seasonal. Also seasonal are forestry, including forest firefighting, lumber, road construction, housing construction etc. It is hard to pay the rent and impossible to buy a house, now overpriced because some b@$#@^ds coming to Montana to escape are willing to pay double or more of what the residents can pay for it given the area's wages. And it isn't possible to collect unemployment on some seasonal jobs even though you might come back to it year after year; if the work is mainly in one quarter and not enough in another quarter, you won't qualify for unemployment. Then you have to take whatever you can find and fast or you don't eat. Been there, done that and bought the tee shirt for years.

If you read how the Bureau of Statistics comes up with their "data" (Bureau of Statistics, How the Government Measures Unemployment), you will find it is not based on unemployment filings or people collecting compensation but instead is based on a mere 60,000 household sample size for the whole U.S., a sample size that to me seems inadequate given the population of the U.S. Further information provided on the website details the process:

"Every month, one-fourth of the households in the sample are changed, so that no household is interviewed more than 4 consecutive months. This practice avoids placing too heavy a burden on the households selected for the sample. After a household is interviewed for 4 consecutive months, it leaves the sample for 8 months and then is again interviewed for the same 4 calendar months a year later, before leaving the sample for good. This procedure results in approximately 75 percent of the sample remaining the same from month to month and 50 percent from year to year" (Bureau of Statistics).

It doesn't sound like much of a sample, using 50 percent of the same households from year to year.

[YOU-CANT-EAT-SCENERY]

Originally Posted by jenzebel

The unemployment stats don't tell the whole story. People sometimes remind me of cattle; they just go along mindlessly following the herd and believing any stats put before them.

MOOOOOO! Excellent points made.

[JoeJoeMan]

Great post jenzebel,

One can get 'stats' and surveys to say just about whatever they want them to say. If you don't get the answer you are looking for doing it one way than try another. So the government gets whatever answer it wants.....As I mention in a previous post - who really beleives. as the government CPI index says, that we have a 2 percent inflation rate, that is absolutly laughable, I'm surpised they even have the b*lls to publish that, I guess and probably rightfully so - they take us all for a bunch of idiots. Like I've also said before, we get (or got) the government we deserve, so think about that next time you old hippies light up.
Yea and great points jensebel about how we montanans can't even afford to buy our own houses anymore. Even if we have a good job, but some janitor from Seattle can sell his house for 800k, and move here buy a house and retire, great, and some people wonder why we montanans get pissed at all the people moving in here.