Unemployment in Athens-Clarke County is up slightly this month, but other employment indicators remain strong.
The Georgia Department of Labor says the county’s unemployment rate was 2.2 percent in December. That’s an uptick of about three-tenths of one percent. But, Labor Commissioner Mark Butler also points to other stats that continue to trend upwards.
For example, the size of the county’s labor force, the number of employed workers, and the number of job openings all increased last month. And, while unemployment has increased slightly in the county, the numbers are still significantly better than December of 2020 when the number of unemployment claims was about 90 percent higher than they were in December 2021.
Unemployment claims in the region and across the state mirror the Athens-Clarke County numbers, with much of the state seeing minor upticks in unemployment claims.