BOISE -- High fuel prices and the fallout from the national housing and financial crises drove Idaho’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate to a four-year high of 4.6 percent in August.

The rate, which has risen every month since February, was 4.1 percent in July and a record low 2.7 percent a year ago.

It was the second time this year Idaho’s unemployment rate jumped a half point as employment continued a steady decline that begun in February. The last half-point jump was in May when the rate rose from 3.1 percent to 3.6 percent.

More Idaho workers were off the job in August – 34,600 – than during any other month since August 1987 when the state was finally pulling out of the near-depression of the mid-1980s.

Another 3,700 people joined the unemployment rolls in August, bringing to 14,400 the additional number workers without jobs since the year began.

Nationally, the unemployment rate jumped to a five-year high of 6.1 percent. It was the 83rd straight month that Idaho has been below the national rate.

The retail trade, which typically adds jobs in August, shed over 500 statewide.   

Job pressure was underscored by reports that Costco received 4,000 applications for the 160 jobs it has at its soon-to-open store in Pocatello.

Overall, 16,400 fewer people were working in Idaho in August than in August 2007, and two of every three of them were in the Boise-Nampa metropolitan area. Twenty-nine of the 44 counties saw employment drop from the year-earlier level as total employment fell to 720,200.

Manufacturing and construction showed job losses of over 4,500 each since August 2007 while the service sector gained just 1,500, a fraction of its typical performance.