Two years after the recession officially ended, unemployment crept up again last month to remain at double-digit levels among more than two-thirds of the counties surrounding Chattanooga.
Seasonal cuts in school jobs such as bus drivers and janitors and the entry of more workers into the labor market from high school and college graduations combined to push up the share of unemployed in June throughout the region.
“It seems like the economy is getting better, but it’s been very frustrating trying to find a job,” said Darin Taylor, a 36-year-old pastor who lost his job at an Alabama auto plant in November 2008 and hasn’t had steady work since. “I do a lot of mowing yards and cleaning gutters, but it’s tough.”
For older workers like Allen Gordon, a 57-year-old floor technician, finding another job has been “very tough.”
“I have job applications in all over,” Gordon said outside the Tennessee Career Center Thursday.