Cherokee Unemployment at 8.4%

Cherokee County’s unemployment rate fell to 8.4 percent in October, according to preliminary figures from the Georgia Department of Labor.

The rate dropped from and from 8.6 percent in October 2010. The local numbers are not adjusted for seasonal factors.

Cherokee County’s good job news paralleled the improvement for the official metro Atlanta area, where the October rate was 9.9 percent, down from 10.2 percent in September and in October 2010.

Cherokee’s rate also remains lower than the seasonally adjusted state and national unemployment rates. For Georgia, the rate was 10.2 percent in October, down from 10.3 percent in September and in October 2010. Nationwide, the number was an even 9 percent in October, compared with 9.1 percent in September and 9.7 in October 2010.

The featured speaker at Bank of North Georgia’s Economic Forecast 2012 breakfast on Tuesday at the , however, suggested the positive news was just a blip in a sluggish economy, the Marietta Daily Journal reported.

Albert Niemi Jr., the business dean at Southern Methodist University, predicted that the national unemployment rate will still be 9 percent at the end of 2012 because the economy isn’t producing jobs fast enough to overcome the growth in the labor force or to accommodate an estimated 12 million people who are underemployed or have given up even trying to find work, the said.

Still, the improvement in Cherokee reflected some job growth.

The civilian labor force of Cherokee residents 16 and older grew by about 1,500 people in the past year to 108,609, according to the state , while the number of jobs increased by slightly more than 1,600 to 99,472.

An additional 522 Cherokee residents got jobs in the past month alone, according to the state’s estimates.

The Atlanta metro area of Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Fayette, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry and Rockdale counties added 13,900 jobs in October, the Labor Department estimated. Most of those jobs were in service-related industries such as professional and business services, trade, transportation, and warehousing, along with education and health services.

Statewide in October, Georgia added 26,500 jobs, up 0.7 percentage point to 3.82 million from 3.79 million in September. Early holiday-related hiring in retail, transportation and warehousing accounted for 12,200 of those new jobs.

October was the 51st consecutive month Georgia exceeded the national unemployment rate.