Idaho Falls added population and lost jobs in the same year

Idaho Falls added about 2,476 residents between July 2024 and July 2025, up 1.44%, in line with the growth eastern Idaho has posted for years. Employment moved the opposite direction. The year ended June 2026 came in around negative 1.2%, and it wasn't a one-month blip. Job counts ran soft most of the year, at points down nearly 2% year over year.

The timing is what makes it worth watching. Idaho National Laboratory, the region's largest employer, is a founding member of the new Intermountain-West Nuclear Energy Corridor Tech Hub, which landed a $40 million federal grant this year, with matching funds, to accelerate advanced nuclear commercialization and build out the regional workforce. That kind of commitment tends to show up in job counts eventually. It hasn't yet.

Cadence Fund I already holds a closed position here, a 66-unit, fully entitled, shovel-ready build-to-rent land position, bought before either number moved. A soft labor market sitting next to a fresh eight-figure federal bet on the town's largest employer is exactly the kind of gap between where the data sits and where it's headed that we built our underwriting to sit inside of.