Nearly twice as many Arrowhead residents filed for unemployment benefits last month as in December 2007, according to the state Department of Employment and Economic Development.
The department said 4,600 people filed for unemployment last month compared to 2,362 in December 2007, a 95 percent increase.
"It was one of the worst months we've seen," said Drew Digby, Northeast Minnesota labor analyst for the department.
Requests for unemployment benefits jumped 69 percent statewide.
After a disappointing 2008, companies have been slicing staff in preparation for worse sales in 2009, said Jim Skurla, acting director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
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"People started chopping a lot of stuff quickly," Skurla said. He said he is hoping a lot of those workers end up getting rehired.
That's been the situation with Rhonda Church of Duluth.
She was laid off last year after 19 years with Miner's Inc., owner of Super One stores.
"Finding a job that paid close to what I was making was a challenge," she said.
Her best job prospect came Friday, when a Miner's representative called to say they're going to be able to give her a bakery position with the same pay and benefits she had before they laid her off.
It was the first bit of good news in months for the 52-year-old woman.
"When you've worked at a place for 19 years," Church said, "to start over again is very devastating."
The Arrowhead region -- St. Louis, Carlton, Aitkin, Cook, Itasca, Koochiching and Lake counties -- was hit particularly hard by downturns in the mining, manufacturing and retail sectors.
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In mining, 300 workers applied for unemployment benefits in December, up from just 33 a year earlier, an increase of 809 percent. Many of those jobs came from U.S. Steel Corp., which idled its taconite mine and processing facility in Keewatin last month.
In manufacturing, the number of people filing for unemployment jumped from 177 in December 2007 to 904 last month, an increase of 411 percent. Employees of Duluth plane manufacturer Cirrus Design Corp., which has laid off and furloughed hundreds of employees, are responsible for many of those claims.
In retail, there was a 106 percent jump in claims, from 96 people last December to 198 people this December.
Even some more
recession-proof industries didn't fare much better. Unemployment claims in the health care and social assistance industry were up 75 percent, and 96 percent in education.
The unemployment rate in the Arrowhead region through November stood at 7.6 percent, up from 5.2 percent a year earlier.
Economists believe unemployment could hit 12 or 13 percent on the Iron Range before the economy improves.
"I wouldn't be surprised if it continued to decline until well into 2010," said David Doorn, an economics professor at the UMD.
