High fuel prices and the persisting 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.

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

Idaho’s rate, which has risen every month since February, was 4.1 percent in July and a record low 2.7 percent a year ago. Although the state labor force has grown substantially in the past two decades, more Idaho workers were off the job in August – 34,600 – than during any other month since August 1987.

Through August of this year, the number of weekly unemployment checks issued by the state was nearly 50 percent higher than for the first eight months of 2007.

The number of nonfarm jobs in Idaho was essentially unchanged from July with service sector openings offsetting a loss of around 1,000 in construction and manufacturing. But retail trade, which typically adds jobs in August, shed over 500 statewide. That was offset by a higher-than-normal increase in employment agency placements.

Clearwater County reported the highest unemployment rate in the state in August at 8.6 percent; Idaho County was 6 percent; Nez Perce County, 4.4 percent; and Lewis County, 4.1 percent. Lewiston reported 4.5 percent unemployment, tying it for third-lowest of the state’s nine largest cities.