The state’s recovery is eluding many Vermonters
New employment numbers out for September show virtually no growth in 2015. Total employment, which includes the self-employed along with payroll employees, dropped for the second month in a row. There were 2,500 fewer Vermonters working in September than in July. Meanwhile, Vermont unemployment fell from 4.1 percent in January to 3.7 percent last month.
Discouraged and 
underemployed
Vermont’s official unemployment rate—U-3, to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics—is back where it was before the Great Recession hit in late 2007. But the broadest unemployment indicator, U-6, is still higher than it was. U-6 includes discouraged and underemployed workers—respectively, those who’d like jobs but are not actively looking, and part-timers who would like to work more hours. In 2006 Vermont’s U-6 rate averaged 6.4 percent; in 2014, 8.8 percent.
Rising poverty
The state’s economy is growing again, but many struggling Vermonters are not seeing the rewards. After the recession of 2001, which ended in November of that year, the number of Vermonters living below the federal poverty line tallied at just over 50,000. In 2014, five years after the official end of the Great Recession, more than 73,000 were officially poor.
