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Show Utah County Gets Near 4.0 Figure For Unemployment While President Carter and Congress wrestle with a compromise version of the Humphrey-Hawkins bill (Full Employment and Balanced : Growth Act of 1977) which sets a national goal of 4 ; percent unemployment rate : by 1983, Utah County is already nearing that figure. According to LeRue Thurston, manager of the Provo Job Service office, the seasonally adjusted unemployment unem-ployment rate for October is 4.8 percent, compared to the . national figure of 7.0 percent for the same month. If normal and traditional seasonal factors are discounted and the area's unemployment is expressed as a raw figure (not seasonally adjusted) the rate is only 3.7 percent, the Job Service Manager noted. Both of these figures appear in the office's monthly Employment Newsletter just issued for October. The job report also shows that total Employment has gone to an all time high of nearly 70,000. These indicators of the healthy Utah County labor market scene are of course reflecting the remarkable economic and population growth taking place in the (Continued on page 4) 4.0 Unemployment (Continued from Page 1 ) area. Nationally the area is being ranked as one of the fastest growing localities of comparable size in the U.S. as determined by most of the significant measures available of economic and related factors. The 1970 U.S. Census showed Utah County population pop-ulation to be 137,776 with a labor force total of 44,270. By July 1975 the Utah Population Work Committee reported the number of Utah County residents had risen to 168,500 and the Provo Job Service office showed the work force to be 65,695. Currently the population is estimated at 179,500 and meanwhile the work force has reached to a new all-time high of 72,464 up 3,890 from October 1976. That's an increase of 5.7 percent. During the past 12 months Utah County employers have added 3,019 new jobs to their payrolls, Mr. Thurston noted. Understandably, this large growth is having a traumatic impact on the number of jobs available through the Provo Job Service. Mr. Thurston said his office received nearly 12,000 job openings during the first nine months of this year. This is a substantial increase over the same period of 1976 and additional job offers are coming in for the complete range of occupations from unskilled to highly skilled, professional and technically trained job seekers. The Job Service manager points out that his office at 190 West 800 North in Provo and the branch office at 265 North Main in Spanish Fork together have the largest single source of job opportunities op-portunities available in the county., For this reason, he encourages all job seekers in the area to make Job Service their first stop in beginning their job search. "Our job matching system is computerized," Mr. Thurston said. "So it's modem and fast and efficient, and the computer assist frees our placement interviewers to work with people instead of paper. I'm certain we can save Utah County job seekers in finding satisfying and rewarding employment and at the same time we can shorten the time Utah County employers em-ployers are without the workers they need." |