Economist forecasts Wyoming unemployment rate to peak at 5.5% LARAMIE, WY (wpr) - Wyoming's unemployment rate sits at five percent right now and one economist predicts it will only rise to five and a half percent before coming down again. The director of the Goss Institute for Economic Research, Ernie Goss, predicts that the unemployment rate in the state will continue to climb.... even as the economy starts to turn around. This is because unemployment rates only account for people who are actively seeking work.
"What normally happens is that those discouraged workers come back in and begin looking for work and then they're counted among the unemployed so the unemployment rate actually increases while business conditions improve."
Goss says that he believes Wyoming's economy will start to turn around at the end of this year, as the national economy improves. He predicts Wyoming's unemployment rate will fall back down to under five percent next year.
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