From our broken record department, it was another good news/bad news employment report for Okanogan County in December, with the unemployment rate up and the civilian labor force down.
Regional Labor Economist Don Meseck breaks down the numbers:
Data doesn't break out which industries were responsible for the job losses, but Meseck has some ideas:
There are now almost 15-hundred unemployed in Okanogan County, compared to only 11hundred-26 last December. The civilian labor force dropped from 18,943 in December 2021 to 18,860 this last December.
The good news in the December report is that total non-farm employment in Okanogan County rose by 360 between December 2021 and 2022. And Meseck says those new jobs span a number of different industries:
Between the two Decembers, the Okanogan County non-farm market expanded by two-point-nine percent.