Dizziness, migraines and heart palpitations landed Matt Kelly in a hospital emergency room a couple of weeks ago. After 2 1/2 days of tests, doctors determined the likely cause: Stress.

That didn't come as a big surprise to Kelly, a 42-year-old Canyon County electrician who first began feeling out of sorts while working a job at the Hanford Nuclear Site near Richland, Wash., this spring.

Desperate for a paycheck after months without work, he took the distant job to feed his family - including his then-pregnant wife and their blended brood of seven boys, who range in age from 2Ý to 18. He rushed home in May for the birth of his baby daughter.

"It's a lot of pressure when you've got eight kids and a wife, and no income coming in," said Kelly's wife, Karen, who tries to comfort her husband when he anxiously paces the floor. "I feel bad for him. I know how much pressure he has on his shoulders."

The Kellys are among thousands of Canyon County families struggling through the recession - which is more like a depression if you don't have a job, Matt Kelly said.

About one of every eight workers in the county doesn't have a job. Canyon County's jobless rate of more than 12 percent in June was the highest ever for the county and the first time the county had the highest rate among the state's 44 counties.

Kelly's recent visit to the ER only added to his family's debt, and they don't have any health insurance.

The middle class family, which donated to the local food bank in the past, now often receives food from family and friends.

"I basically don't go anywhere ... and try to stretch everything," Karen Kelly said. "We eat a lot of noodles. You can get those for $1."

Last year they began selling non-essentials, including their boys' dirt bikes. The Cessna 182 they acquired after Matt took up flying a few years back is up for sale - but no one is buying.

The one thing the family hopes it won't lose is the house they spent the past two years building. Kelly, who created Kelly Electric about five years ago, used to get such steady work from builders that he never had to advertise.

"We're within 30 days of being foreclosed on our house. We haven't given up. We just really are praying for a miracle," Matt Kelly said.

CANYON HIT HARD

Canyon County workers in all sectors have been affected, but construction, retail, real estate, mortgage and titling companies have been among the worst, according to Labor Department officials and others.

"The contractors themselves, their businesses have completely fallen through," said Laura Tompkins, Nampa-based regional manager of Working Solutions, a program of Easter Seals-Goodwill Northern Rocky Mountain that provides work services to welfare recipients across the state of Idaho.

Tompkins said her staff is now seeing more people with master's degrees and those who were formerly self-employed, including owners of cleaning, auto detail and even day-care businesses.

"If people aren't going to work, they don't need people to watch their children," Tompkins said.

Working Solutions in Nampa is working with as many as 100 new people each week and opened a second office at 714 Cleveland Boulevard in Caldwell on Monday.

"We see more people dealing with foreclosures than ever before," Tompkins said. She estimated that half of the homeowners whom her staff is working with are facing foreclosure.

"Everybody knows somebody who has been laid off," Tompkins said. "Every person or family has been touched."

LAYING OFF FAMILY

"In four decades of work, there's been horrible times. I don't think it's ever been as bad as it is now," said Nancy Roberts, wife of R&M Steel Company founder and president Rob Roberts.

For the first time in 40 years, the Caldwell company had to lay off two people.

"It's awful. You're not laying off a person; you're laying off your family," said Nancy Roberts, noting that business has retained many employees for decades.

R&M also had to cut back hours for some employees.

Although self-employed people like Matt Kelly don't qualify for unemployment insurance benefits, they are included in the jobless numbers released monthly by the Idaho Department of Labor, according to John Panter, a regional economist for the Idaho Department of Labor.

"In order to be counted, you have to be unemployed and actively seeking employment," Panter said. "If you're unemployed and not looking, you're not counted."

The county's spike in unemployment in June wasn't likely due to Micron layoffs, though initial analysis by some pointed that direction, Panter said.

Micron announced that it would be laying off 2,000 people between February and August; the state won't disclose how many there were in June because the specifics are confidential.

Nevertheless, Panter said the main employment issue in Canyon County in June was a failure of jobs to materialize at a time of year when there is typically solid job growth.

There were 2,900 more jobs in Idaho in June than there were in May, but economic models show there should have been about 6,100 jobs added.

The labor force in Canyon County increased by 1,455 in June - likely teens, retirees and spouses who hadn't been working before looking for jobs, Panter said. But just 399 of them actually found jobs.

In Caldwell, whose 13.5 percent unemployment is the highest among Idaho's largest cities, Chamber of Commerce President/CEO Diana L. Brown said the chamber has had to cut two part-time positions, and some members can't afford the annual dues (about $200 for small businesses).

But the chamber has about 500 members - and it's still growing, Brown said.

"Our gains are bigger than our losses," she said

Caldwell-based Salvation Army Captains Aurelio and Ligia Ambriz say they're seeing more middle-class people coming in for food. The cupboards were bare before the postal drive in May that brought in 12,000 pounds of non-perishable food, twice as much as last year.

"The word went out that we are in hard times," Aurelio Ambriz said.

The Ambrizes spoke of the difficulties of the many - retail and restaurant workers who lost jobs or had their hours cut - and of individuals, like Shawn Marie Anderson.

The first-grade teacher - a single mother of two boys - lost her teaching job at a Christian school in Caldwell last fall, when the school didn't re-open due to low enrollment. In October, she landed a job in the Meridian School District - but she lost that in June.

She's still paying off $25,000 in medical bills from a serious illness her son was hospitalized for in 2006 and faces foreclosure on her home in October.

"I don't know where I'm going to live. I don't know where I'm going to work," said Anderson, 35, who is thankful for the support of the Salvation Army staff, who have prayed with her. "I'm a Christian. I have faith and I have hope that something is going to work."

Anderson tells her first-grade students that perseverance is her favorite word.

"I'm not a quitter. You've got to persevere," she said.

Katy Moeller: 377-6413