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Summit County Unemployment Keeps Dropping

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Nov 7, 2009 5:11 pm US/Mountain

Summit County Unemployment Keeps Dropping

Reporting
Stan Bush
SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. (CBS4) ― The national jobless rate rose to 10.2 percent in October as employers cut 190,000 jobs. Colorado's latest unemployment rate is at 7 percent, but the October numbers won't be out until next week.

Summit County may have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the state at under 6 percent and by the time the October numbers come out, it should be much lower than that. Unemployment numbers in Summit County have been dropping since August.

Stephen Sisemore is a lift operator at Copper Mountain. It's the first job he's had since graduating college. He had to move from Oklahoma to get the job.

"I spent all summer looking for jobs and it was tough for sure," Sisemore said.

Sisemore is one of hundreds of people finding seasonal prosperity in resort towns. The demand for workers in retail, food and ski has temporarily dropped the unemployment numbers.

"I think everybody sort of has a dream of being a ski bum in their lifetime. You know it's a fun place to work," Suzanne Snell with Copper Mountain said.

For some people that dream is a fall-back plan. Architect Ben Henson has been out of work since April. Finding a professional job is harder to find in the mountains.

"In the ski industry you can get a lift job, a rental shop job, but the pay isn't what I'm looking for to keep my lifestyle," Henson said.

This season the lift operators may be the most over-qualified employees the resorts have ever hired.

"People with bachelor degrees, we had a couple Ph. Ds apply, architects, people who have finished school and haven't been able to get jobs," Snell said.

Vail Resorts says this winter 75 percent of its employees are Colorado residents.

(© MMIX CBS Television Stations, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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