High nationwide unemployment rightly gets a lot of attention from politicians, the news media and “ordinary folks.”
But we may be less aware of specific unemployment rates in our immediate area. Sadly, for many residents of this region of Tennessee and Georgia, joblessness is even worse than it is for the United States as a whole.
In June, Hamilton County’s jobless rate rose to 9.2 percent — up 1 percent from the May figure and matching the national number. The lowest unemployment rate in this area was in Catoosa County, Ga., though the figure was still a painful 8.1 percent even there. Sequatchie County was next, at 8.9 percent.
The numbers quickly rise, though, with the worst area unemployment rate being in Grundy County at 14 percent!
News accounts cited a couple of factors that likely have contributed to the rising local rates of unemployment. Some seasonal workers, such as school janitors, are unemployed for the summer. The normal growth of the labor market from high schoolers and college students graduating and starting to search for jobs has also made unemployment increase.
We fortunately have seen some job creation in Hamilton County because of Volkswagen and other large and small economic development investments.
But with joblessness still far higher than what it would be in a reasonably healthy economy, our region and our nation obviously still have a long way to go before the serious financial pain that many Americans are experiencing begins to subside.