Montana Reaches Six Months of Unemployment Below 3%

By Micah Drew, Daily Montanan

The Walt Sullivan Building where the Montana Department of Labor and Industry are housed (Photo by Eric Seidle for the Daily Montanan).

With an unemployment rate of 2.7% in March, down from 2.8% last month, Montana has now seen six straight months of rates under 3%.

The governor’s office and Department of Labor and Industry continue to praise the low seasonally adjusted unemployment rate, the third stint below 3% since the Federal Reserve began measuring the rate in the 1970s.

Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, Montana saw an unemployment rate below 3% for two full years from October 2021 to October 2023.

It ticked up slightly from then to 3.1% in December of that year, before slowly ticking down. March marked the 45th consecutive month of unemployment at or below 3.4%.

“For six months, Montana’s unemployment rate has remained below 3%, with nearly two job openings for every unemployed worker,” Governor Greg Gianforte said in a press release. “Through our efforts to lower taxes and remove red tape, we’ve have created an environment that empowers entrepreneurs and businesses to invest and create good-paying jobs for Montanans across our state.”

The unemployment was 1.5% lower than the national rate, which came in at 4.2% in March. The state’s unadjusted unemployment rate of 3.0% ranks 5th in the U.S.

The state said the labor force in Montana decreased by 572 workers last month. Data shows the state has added 1,500 payroll jobs over the last month.

Forty-four of the state’s counties currently have unemployment rates below 4%, and 19 of them have seen net job gains over the last year year, according to data from the Department of Labor and Industry.

Gallatin County has seen the largest drop in employment over the last year with 348 fewer people employed this year compared to last. Missoula county, however, has seen the most growth with 860 additional people becoming employed.

Unemployment rates remain higher on the state’s seven Native American reservations – ranging from a non-seasonally adjusted rate of 4.7% on the Flathead Indian Reservation up to 13.1% on Rocky Boy’s reservation. All seven reservations have seen net job decreases in the last year.