Chattanooga’s jobless rate declined last month as holiday hiring pushed unemployment in the six-county metropolitan area down two-tenths of a percent to 3.1%, the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development reported Thursday.
Unemployment in Hamilton County and the three primary bedroom counties for Chattanooga in North Georgia — Dade, Catoosa and Walker — all had jobless rates in November below both the state and national averages.
But in most of the other neighboring rural counties around Chattanooga, the unemployment rate was above the U.S. rate of 3.3% and Tennessee’s rate of 3.4% for November.
Bledsoe County’s 5.3% jobless rate last month was the highest among all 95 counties in Tennessee. To the south, the 3.6% jobless rate in the Dalton area was the highest jobless rate in November among Georgia’s 14 metropolitan areas even though Dalton’s unemployment rate fell last month from the 4.4% rate in the previous month.
As the carpet capital of the world, Dalton’s economy is tied to the floor covering industry that is being hit by a slowdown in construction and remodeling activity as interest rates rise.