Local unemployment rises to 11-month high

Chattanooga area employers added another 4,170 jobs last month, but the employment gains were more than offset by the addition of even more local workers into the labor market from graduations and other summertime seasonal gains.

As a result, the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development said Thursday the jobless rate in metropolitan Chattanooga last month jumped by a full percentage point to 4.1 percent — the highest monthly level since last July.

In the six-county Chattanooga metropolitan area, employment has grown nearly 3.7 percent in the past year, or more than twice the rate of growth in jobs for the United States as a whole. But the June jobless rate was pushed up by an influx of workers into the labor market.

Similarly, unemployment in metro Dalton, Georgia which has been on the decline for the past several years, rose in June by seven-tenths of a percent to 4.8 percent. The local figures are not seasonally adjusted, however, and unemployment traditionally edges higher in June after school is out for the summer, and more graduates enter the labor market.

“An uptick in the unemployment rate is common this time of year due to an increase in high school and college graduates entering the workforce,” Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said. “The Georgia job market is still very strong.”

Unemployment across the Chattanooga region was lowest last month in the Northwest Georgia counties bordering Chattanooga in Catoosa and Dade and highest in the rural counties of Southeast Tennessee in Bledsoe and Van Buren, which had the second and third highest jobless rates of all 95 counties in Tennessee.

Despite higher jobless rates across the region, staffing agencies say that finding workers for available jobs is still a challenge. The Tennessee Department of Labor lists nearly 40 percent more jobs than there are unemployed persons looking for work in the state.

“It’s a lot more challenging now to find workers than it used to be and that is why we are doing more to get out and recruit potential applicants,” Necole Mabry, a staffing specialist for Manpower, said this week during a job fair at the Bethlehem Center in Alton Park.

Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfree press.com or at 423757-6340.