The state’s September jobs report seems positive in some respects, but alarming once you drill down into the data.

The bottom line is that Idaho’s economy is still struggling, just like our country as a whole.

Idaho’s unemployment rate — the stat that attracts the most attention — dropped three-tenths of a percent to 7.1 percent last month, the lowest unemployment rate in Idaho since May 2009.

The decline matches an identical three-tenths drop in the national unemployment rate to 7.8 percent in September.

Idaho’s tradition of having a lower unemployment rate than the national average continues and the fact our economy here created another 1,200 jobs last month is without a doubt indicative of progress as we try to recover from the Great Recession.

What’s alarming is that another 500 people left Idaho’s labor force — they moved away or simply stopped looking for work.

The Idaho Department of Labor said the state’s shrinking workforce in September “continued a contraction unmatched during Idaho’s summer peak employment season.”

The department reports that more than 6,000 people have left Idaho’s workforce since May. When one considers that this is on top of what the department calls “the worst labor force exodus” in Idaho history from October 2008 to May 2009, a decline of 9,100 workers, one begins to see the toll of the recession on our state.

What’s scary about the current decline in Idaho’s workforce is that it’s happened over only five months. That truly is “unprecedented” in state history and sort of ruins the celebration over Idaho’s declining unemployment rate.

Prior to the Great Recession, Idaho’s largest workforce decline was between December 1979 and August 1980, when 8,700 people left or stopped looking for jobs.

It’s a lot easier to have a lower unemployment rate when your workforce shrinks. But that’s not what a growing economy looks like in Idaho or nationwide.

Although we wonder just how much Idaho and the rest of the country are recovering from the down economy, the state’s September jobs report did include some good news.

The number of people receiving unemployment benefits from the state dropped 36 percent last month compared to a year ago. About 720,000 Idahoans are working, the highest number since 2008, reversing a two-month decline.

The Department of Labor also reported: “Except for construction and information, all major industrial sectors saw larger payrolls this fall than a year ago.” Nonfarm jobs were up 1.2 percent from September 2011. The department also said that for every two Idaho job openings there are fewer than 5 workers available. That’s “half the competition for jobs that existed at the peak of the recession,” the Department of Labor stated.

Still, the department says nonfarm job numbers in the state are below what they were in 2005, and construction and manufacturing employment is still at a 20-year low. Idaho’s employment picture is not expected to fully recover from the recession until 2015, the department said.

Like our nation, Idaho is clearly not done with the Great Recession and its aftermath. We as a state and nation have our work cut out for us.