Unemployment Drops in Stephens Co. For May

Preliminary May figures from the Georgia Department of Labor show another drop in the unemployment rate for Stephens County.

According to the Labor Department numbers, Stephens County had a preliminary May unemployment rate of 5.3 percent.

That is one-tenth of a percentage point lower than the revised April rate of 5.4 percent and a full 1.5 percentage points lower than the revised rate for May 2015, which was 6.8 percent.

The number of employed in Stephens County was 10,228 in May, higher than both April’s figure of 10,141 and last May’s figure of 10,097.

Meanwhile, Stephens County’s labor force for May was 10,796, up from April’s labor force of 10,716, but slightly down from the May 2015 labor force of 10,834.

Stephens County’s trends mirror those of the Georgia Mountains region.

State Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said those regional trends are a good sign.

“The rate going down sometimes can be for bad news like we saw just last month nationally, where we saw hundreds of thousands of individuals leave the labor force,” said Butler. “However, that is not what we are seeing in the Georgia Mountains region. As we saw, almost 2,200 individuals actually returned to the workforce, to go out there and start looking for work. Even better is we saw almost 3,000 individuals actually gain employment during the month of May and we really love to see it when we see Georgians go back to work.”

For the month of May, the Georgia Mountains region saw its unemployment rate drop three-tenths of a percentage point to 4 percent.

Looking at other area counties, Franklin County’s May unemployment rate went down three-tenths of a percentage point to 4.6 percent; Habersham County also saw its May unemployment rate drop three-tenths of a percentage point to 4.5 percent; and Banks County’s May unemployment rate was 4.4 percent, a drop of three-tenths of a percentage point.