Autumn brings a slide in employment

Vermont’s unemployment rate, which counts only those actively looking for work, remained steady at 3.7 percent last month. But that’s not the whole story. In October the number of Vermonters working, including the self-employed, slid to its lowest point since 2003. Based on household surveys, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated 332,440 Vermonters employed in October—2,000 fewer than in September and a drop of about 4,500 since July.

Fluctuations in jobs
The loss of 50 or 100 jobs seems like big news in Vermont. But in any given year employers eliminate tens of thousands of jobs. In better times they also create tens of thousands of jobs—and the state nets an increase. Newly released data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that Vermont lost 20,057 jobs between March 2014 and March 2015. During the same period private employers added 22,683 jobs.

More without homes
The number of Vermonters with no place to live dropped a bit in 2015, but homelessness remains higher than it was at the end of the recession. According to the latest annual homeless count by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the number of homeless Vermonters fell 2.3 percent this year, to 1,523. But that is a 25 percent increase in homelessness since the official end of the recession in 2009.
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