Missoula Social Measures
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What Is Missoula Measures? Missoula Measures provides succinct information on scores of topics helpful to maintaining and building a more healthy, sustainable community and region. The topics are divided into four categories and material has been collected and condensed with a specific audience in mind- interested residents of Missoula, Montana, those living in the Clark Fork Watershed, and anyone else with interests in this region. Built from the work and thinking of thousands of people and organizations, this site is intended to be a good place to start when you are looking for pertinent information related to a community or regional concern.
Jobs sustain our citizens. Members of the work force who don’t have a job can experience sever difficulties. The proportion of our work force that is unemployed affects regional wages and incomes, and influences Missoula’s ability to provide skilled workers to support any new economic activity. The ability of local governments to provide services is also affected by the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate is the percentage of members of the work force who do not have a job. Employment can be either full or part-time.
Missoula County’s unemployment rate has been declining since the early 1990s. This parallels the trends evident in the State of Montana and in the rest of the United States. The current annual average rate of unemployment in Missoula County (4.3 percent) is slightly lower than that of Montana as a whole (5.3 percent). Both of these rates are near their historic lows.
It is important to remember that there is some controversy over the definition of who is in the work force. So-called discouraged workers are not included in the definition used here. Further, this measure does not account for the underemployed. The underemployed may work a part-time job when they need a full-time job. Finally, even full-time employment may not pay enough for a household to be able to sustain itself without any outside help from the government or another social service agency.
For a longer-term look at Missoula county unemployment rates, see the population change and unemployment section of this document.
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