Health care, tourism, and manufacturing will continue to lead economic growth in Kootenai County, while the real estate market there likely will see tepid improvement at best in the coming year, some North Idaho observers say.

Kootenai County's preliminary unemployment rate for October is 10.5 percent, down from 11.4 percent in October 2010. That would mean 800 fewer people were unemployed in October than a year earlier, says Alivia Body, Coeur d'Alene-based economist with the Idaho Department of Labor.

As of September, Kootenai County job openings registered through the Department of Labor were up compared with a year earlier, Body says.

Most of the openings were at local call centers and health-care providers, including nursing-care facilities and home-health care businesses, she says, adding, "Health care has been the fastest growing industry in Kootenai County through the recession."

Kootenai Health, the hospital district that operates Kootenai Medical Center, also posts a substantial number of job listings each month on its own website, Body says.

Tourism continues to be a strong economic driver, she says.

Athol-based theme park Silverwood Inc., for instance, drew a 2011 attendance of 628,000, an increase of 6 percent over last year's record attendance, and the park is investing $2 million on new attractions for 2012, Body says.

A recently completed $75 million major expansion and upgrade of the Coeur d'Alene Casino Resort Hotel, near the small town of Worley at the south end of Kootenai County, is expected to create 150 permanent jobs, she says.

The manufacturing sector showed strong gains in employment and production this year, and that's expected to continue, Body says.

Post Falls-based Ground Force Manufacturing LLC, for example, broke ground in October on facilities for a new subsidiary, Underground Force LLC, which is expected to expand its workforce by 200 employees during the next several years.

Steve Wilson, president and CEO of the Coeur d'Alene Chamber of Commerce, says the hospitality and retail industries in Kootenai County are seeing hopeful signs of continued improvement.

"The end of the year seems to be very strong," Wilson says. "Restaurants and hotels have had above-average sales for November and early December."

Retail sales are also on par with or up from last year's sales, he says. "It's always a positive way to start the next year," he says. "Consumer confidence is important to any economic recovery."

Education construction projects, such as the education corridor under development north of the North Idaho College campus, in Coeur d'Alene, and the Kootenai Technical Education Campus, on the Rathdrum Prairie, likely also will help lift confidence in economic recovery, Wilson adds.

"Any time we have highly visible construction projects, it's good for employment and a morale booster for the community," he says.

The residential real estate market in Kootenai County appears to be bouncing along the bottom, says Kim Cooper, a broker at Select Brokers LLC, in Coeur d'Alene, and a spokesman for the Coeur d'Alene Association of Realtors.

"Short of a surge in employment, we're going to anticipate we will stay where we are," Cooper says.

While the number of homes sold through the association's Multiple Listing Service has ticked upwards for the second consecutive year, prices have continued to slip.

"Year to date at the end of October, we had a 4 percent increase in the number of sales with only a 0.4 percent dollar volume increase, which means we're selling more homes at slightly lower prices," Cooper says.