Jobs Tied to Ag

Despite metropolitan Boise’s status as Idaho’s commercial, financial and government center, one of every six jobs is in agriculture or tied to it. The Boise metropolitan statistical area is comprised of Ada, Canyon, Boise, Gem and Owyhee counties. Statewide, the agriculture sector provided nearly 20 percent of all jobs. The U.S. Agriculture Department identifies 197 specific industries in the economy’s agriculture sector. They range from direct crop and stock production, processing, supplying producers and processors with goods and services and wholesaling and retailing the end products. In 2008 as the national recession impacted the economy overall, agriculture offered some stability. Total wages statewide dropped fractionally from 2007 and average employment was off more than 7,000 across all sectors – 5,000 of that in the five-county area. But agriculture posted fractional increases in both employment and wages in the metro area and statewide. Idaho Department of Labor Spokesman Bob Fick explains: “What the statistics show is how broad agriculture is intertwined with the entire economy. People talk about agriculture and they think only about farmers and tractors on open fields and ranchers on horses driving cattle and sheep but agriculture is interwoven through the entire economy from the time the meat or crops leave the field to be processed through food processing plants to distributors who have truck drivers who drive the commodities throughout the region and the country to retailers from grocery stores to convenience stores to restaurants and taverns and distilleries.”