• Home
  • News
    • Politics & Government
    • Business & Economy
    • Crime / Courts
    • Health / Medicine
  • Sports
    • High School Sports
    • Radio Iowa Poll
  • Affiliates
    • Affiliate Support Page
  • Contact Us
    • Reporters

Radio Iowa

Iowa's Radio News Network

You are here: Home / Business / “Pretty good” job growth in Iowa

“Pretty good” job growth in Iowa

November 21, 2012 By O. Kay Henderson

An eastern Iowa think tank uses the phrase “pretty good” to describe job growth in Iowa during the first 10 months of the year.

According to the Labor Department, Iowa’s unemployment rate fell to 5.1 percent in October — and the number of non-farm jobs in Iowa increased by six-thousand last month. David Osterberg of the Iowa Policy Project says there’s been an average of 1700 job openings in Iowa in each of the past 10 months.

“That’s pretty good,” Osterberg says.

Iowa manufacturers have hired 8000 more workers in the past 10 months.

“We tend to like that because we think that those are better jobs,” Osterberg says.

Other job gains have been in businesses like restaurants and hotels and in health care facilities that tend to pay low wages. Osterberg says Iowa’s job gains would be more significant were it not for job losses in city, county and state governments.

“We’ve been shedding jobs in the government sector and it’s keeping us from really picking up,” o says. “Remember, we’re still 32,000 jobs below where we were when we got into this mess, so we’re not out of the hole of the recession yet.”

Iowa hit a peak level of employment in May of 2008. According to Osterberg, it will take Iowa 19 months to get back to that peak at the current rate of job creation.

“I think that 6000 jobs in a month is good,” Osterberg says. “But we always have to say: ‘It’s only one month.'”

Over 13,000 Iowans made an initial application for unemployment benefits in October, a 43 percent increase from September. But the number of long-term unemployed is dropping, down by about seven percent for 2012.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Filed Under: Business, News, Politics / Govt Tagged With: Employment and Labor

Featured Stories

Jury returns guilty verdict in shooting death of State Trooper

Summit has easements for 20% of carbon pipeline route through Iowa

Morel mushroom hunters on hold without warmer conditions

Trinity Health aquiring all MercyOne health properties

Field of Dreams site developer wants to bid on state baseball, softball tournaments

TwitterFacebook
Tweets by RadioIowa

Iowa Special Olympics Summer games set to open in Ames

Radio Iowa/Baseball Coaches Association High School Poll 5/16/22

Iowa assistant coach Kirk Speraw to retire

Northern Iowa prepares for Missouri Valley Conference softball tournament

T.J. Otzelberger announces staff changes at Iowa State

More Sports

eNews and Updates

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Archives

Copyright © 2022 · Learfield News & Ag, LLC