By Tim King
The Land Correspondent
— Although unemployment has reached new heights nationally it has been declining steadily in many rural counties since early last year.
As an example, unemployment peaked in Todd County in February 2009 at 11.7 percent, according to the state of Minnesota. It has declined steadily since then. In October the unemployment rate in Todd County was 7.4 percent. That is actually two-tenths of a percent lower than the state’s 7.6 percent unemployment rate at the end of October. Although national unemployment is now 10 percent, it was 10.2 percent at the end of October.
The central Minnesota counties neighboring Todd County have also experienced substantial declines in the unemployment rate. Wadena County peaked at 13.6 percent in March 2009. By October the Wadena County rate was down more than 5 percent to 8.4 percent.
With 9 percent of its work force unemployed in October, Morrison County had the highest unemployment rate in the area. But that is substantially lower than the 14.6 percent unemployment rate in Morrison County at the end of March.
South of Todd and Morrison, in Stearns County, only 6.5 percent of workers were unemployed in October whereas 9.5 percent of them had no work in March.
Douglas County, where Alexandria is located, had an October unemployment rate of 5.4 percent. It was the lowest in the area. Douglas County had a peak of 8.3 percent of its workers unemployed in February 2009.
The trend in higher percentages of the work force having employment as 2009 progressed is not limited to rural central Minnesota counties. Of seven counties examined all had unemployment that peaked between the months of January through March 2009.
All of those counties — Norman and Kittson in the northwest, Lac qui Parle, Chippewa and Lyon in the southwest, Houston in the southeast and Brown in the south central — had a lower percentage of workers in October than at their peak of unemployment. Chippewa County had the lowest percentage of decline between its 9.8 percent unemployment in January 2009 and October’s 6.7 percent. Chippewa is also the only county that showed more of its workers unemployed in October than were unemployed in September.
With the possible exception of Chippewa County, it appears that unemployment in Minnesota’s rural counties is in a steady decline.
Many rural counties also have lower unemployment percentages than the state of Minnesota as a whole. High unemployment in urban counties such as Hennepin and St. Louis bring the state average up. Unemployment numbers peaked in both counties in June. By October St. Louis was down to 7.7 percent unemployed workers and Hennepin was at 7.0 percent. That is higher than all but three of the 12 rural counties whose statistics were examined.
Carol Anderson, executive director of Community Development of Morrison County, in Little Falls, said there are likely a number of reasons for rural Minnesota’s improving unemployment numbers.
“Rural banks are generally locally owned and they tend to be more conservative than the large national banks,” she said, noting that generally, conservative banks translate into a conservative, and healthy, small business community.
Anderson also believes the economic stimulus money has had a positive impact in rural counties, as has an improving stock market.
“There is more confidence now,” she said.
State records show that January is historically the worst month for employment in many rural counties. History could repeat itself as the new year begins if a mid-December lay off of printing workers at R.R. Donnelley in Todd County is any indication. However, history also shows employment improves as the year goes on.
