Unemployment falls—but so does employment
Vermont’s unemployment rate hit an 18-year low of 2.7 percent last month—matching the rate recorded in May of 2000 and just a tick above the all-time low of 2.6 percent, reached in March of that year. Despite the decline in joblessness, however, Vermont has not seen a corresponding increase in the number of Vermonters employed, which fell for the fifth month in a row in November.
Comparing counties
Chittenden County made up 38 percent of Vermont’s economy in 2015. That may not surprise most Vermonters, but now it’s official. This month the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis published its first analysis of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—the total of all goods and services produced—by county. Vermont’s GDP was $30.7 billion in 2015. Of that, Chittenden County produced $11.5 billion. At the other extreme, Grand Isle County’s GDP was $159 million, and Essex County’s, $105 million. The fastest-growing county in 2015 was Lamoille, where GDP rose 9.3 percent, after adjusting for inflation.
More services
Service-providing industries made up 71 percent of Vermont’s economic activity in 2017. This is a slight increase from 2016 and reflects a 20-year trend in which services account for more and more of overall GDP. Meanwhile, goods-producing industries and government continue to comprise smaller shares of the economy, growing at much slower rates than service-providing industries.
“Joblessness” is an interesting word, along with the “unemployment rate.” Does the unemployed number as one of two figures comprising the total labor force only include those actively looking for work as identified through unemployment compensation, or also include those no longer receiving unemployment benefits, who may or may not be actively looking for work?
In this report unemployed includes anyone not employed but available and looking for work within the last four weeks; and those not working but waiting to be called back to a job from which they were laid off. This is the definition used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as the “official” unemployment rate (U-3), and is not dependent on receipt of unemployment insurance.
The BLS provides alternate measures of unemployment including the U-6. The U-6 includes those who want and are available for work, and have looked for work in the past 12 months; and those who want and are available for work full-time but who have had to settle for a part-time schedule. Many think of this as the true unemployment rate. Vermont’s most recent U-6 unemployment rate was 6.1% (September 2018). For more detail on the different measures, see here: https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm