News articles elsewhere in this week’s Tribune offer a bit of cautious optimism about the economy in Custer County.

 

The county zoning office reports that 96 permits have been issued so far this year compared to 81 during the same period a year ago. Silver Cliff, too, reports a slight increase, while a decline was noted in Westcliffe.

 

Also, the county reports an increase in sales tax revenues of around eight percent, though the two towns suffered declines.

 

And there’s some good news on the local job scene. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this week that the Custer County unemployment rate in May was 5.9 percent, the lowest level in nearly two years.

 

The federal agency said of the county’s 2,096 eligible workers, 1,973 are getting a regular paycheck, with just 123 unemployed. The Colorado unemployment level is 8.3 percent, with 2,450,000 workers employed and 222,000 out of work.

 

The local jobless rate seems to portend an encouraging trend: the unemployment level here in March was 7.6 percent. The recent high was in February 2009, when a full 8.1 percent of our workers were unemployed. (For comparison’s sake, the all-time high was in March 1992 when our jobless rate was 11.4 percent. The all-time low was in June 1999, with a rate of just 1.8 percent.)

 

Clearly, we’re not out of the woods yet. But the positive trends in the unemployment levels and in the county zoning office are encouraging. And we predict that when the sales tax revenues for the summer months are revealed, there will be more positive news.