The Flathead Valley, at least in terms of its workforce, has radically changed over the past five years. While there are still those who long for the days when manufacturing and construction dominated the landscape, many of those jobs are gone – perhaps for good.
That was part of the message delivered last week by analysts at the annual Economic Future of the Flathead seminar, where statistics flashed on a large screen backed up what many local business leaders already know: Things may never be the same.
Some of the most telling numbers:
Between 2005 and 2010, when the size of Flathead County’s workforce essentially stayed the same, it lost 1,124 jobs in construction, 719 in manufacturing and 114 in real estate. In contrast, the county gained 1,011 jobs in health care, 516 in accommodation and food services (think tourism) and 164 in professional, scientific and technical services.
The questions now: Can the local workforce adapt? Can employers recruit and retain qualified workers? There are jobs available, but more of them require training or a college degree. According to the U.S. Census, 26.7 percent of Flathead County residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher, which may need to tick up.
Meanwhile, unemployment in Northwest Montana remains staggeringly high. December’s non-seasonally adjusted rate in Flathead County was measured at 10.6 percent. In the past 12 months the rate has sunk below 10 percent only once – in September 2011. But there are glimmers of hope.
Last month’s rate is 1.5 percentage points lower than it was the same month a year earlier and economists last week were cautiously optimistic that the bottom had been reached and the economy would continue to expand – employment tallied a 2.2 percent growth rate from the third quarter of 2010 to the same period in 2011, the highest rate since 2007.
The recent numbers don’t account for the scores of underemployed, those who were forced to leave the area and those who have given up looking for a job altogether. And it doesn’t consider the hundreds of area residents who now work in the North Dakota oil fields but maintain residence here.
None of this is to suggest that the region will return to the high-flying mid-aughts, when a 6 percent growth rate was common and, at one point in September 2006, the local jobless rate was measured at 2.5 percent, which is essentially zero. Those days are unlikely to be repeated anytime soon.
But this is also an opportunity for the valley. Old and new industries can complement each other and coexist. The real estate and the construction industries are bad, but pockets of the valley are getting better. The timber industry appears to be emerging from some of its worst years in recent memory and a new trade agreement with Canada assures that it can remain competitive.
What’s also encouraging is that residents, instead of simply receiving an unemployment check, are heading back to school to retrain. The number of students at Flathead Valley Community College has leveled out over the last year, but is still historically high.
Recently school officials there met with employers from local tech industries to talk about how they can teach students the skills needed to fill jobs that are available now. The new nursing school, which may break ground this spring, is another positive step toward training locals for local jobs.
Northwest Montana still has the highest jobless rate in the state, by far. But for the first time in several years analysts at the Economic Future of the Flathead seminar have begun to see signs of hope, which is far better than in previous years, when the outlook was altogether grim.