Paulding's Jobless Rate Down to 10%

Paulding County’s unemployment rate fell to 10 percent in October, according to preliminary figures from the Georgia Department of Labor.

The rate dropped from and from 10.3 percent in October 2010. The local numbers are not adjusted for seasonal factors.

Paulding County’s good job news paralleled the improvement for Northwest Georgia, where the October rate was 10.4 percent, down from 10.6 percent in September and in October 2010.

Paulding’s rate remains lower than the state rate—a seasonally adjusted 10.2 percent in October, down from 10.3 percent in September and in October 2010—but higher than the national rate—an even, seasonally adjusted 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 Paulding reflected some job growth.

The civilian labor force of Paulding residents 16 and older grew by only 875 people in the past year to 67,177, according to the state , but the number of jobs increased by nearly 1,000 to 60,461.

An additional 317 Paulding residents got jobs in October alone, according to the state’s estimates.

The Northwest Georgia statistical area of Bartow, Catoosa, Chattooga, Dade, Fannin, Floyd, Gilmer, Gordon, Haralson, Murray, Paulding, Pickens, Polk, Walker and Whitfield counties actually lost 209 jobs in October, the Labor Department estimated, but the unemployment rate declined because the labor force of more than 405,000 people shrank by 756.

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.