Cherokee Unemployment Rises to 7.6%

Cherokee County’s unemployment rate rose in January but wound up lower than the rate originally reported for December.

The January jobless rate for the county was 7.6 percent, according to preliminary figures the Georgia Department of Labor released today, up from 7.4 percent in December.

The , but it turns out 2011 was even better for Cherokee employment than initially thought. The Labor Department revised the December figure down a half-point.

Along with the usual refinements that can move the percentage by one or two tenths of a point, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the state agency just conducted an annual benchmarking to improve the job data’s accuracy.

Because the local job numbers are not adjusted for seasonal factors, such as a post-holiday slowdown in retail sales and a winter lull in construction, the most meaningful comparison is with the statistics from a year ago, not a month ago.

In January 2011, Cherokee’s unemployment rate was 8.7 percent. In the 12 months that followed, 2,887 additional county residents found jobs, raising the total to 104,599, the state Labor Department found.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for the 28-county Atlanta metro area, which includes Cherokee, rose from a revised 8.9 percent in December to 9.2 percent in January. That’s down from 10.3 percent a year earlier.

The Labor Department said the rate increased because of layoffs in construction, manufacturing, retail trade, transportation, warehousing, and administrative and support services.

In the 10-county area served by the Atlanta Regional Commission, the January jobless rate was 9.1 percent, up from a revised 8.9 percent in December but down a point from 10.1 percent in January 2011.

Statewide, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped from 9.4 percent in December to 9.2 percent in January, compared with 10.1 percent in January 2011. The state gained 83,700 jobs from January to January, the biggest growth for Georgia since 2006, the Labor Department said.

Professional and business services accounted for the biggest chunk of that growth with 37,000 new jobs, followed by retail trade with 15,100 new jobs, health care and social assistance with 11,100, and manufacturing with 7,300.

The state rate remained above the national rate of 8.3 percent in January, down from 8.5 percent in December and 9.1 percent in January 2011.

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