Unemployment rose again last month in Whitfield and Murray counties to push the jobless rate in metropolitan Dalton to the highest rate among Georgia' metropolitan areas.
The Georgia Department of Labor said today that Dalton's jobless rate rose three-tenths of a percentage point to 10.7 percent in August - the highest monthly rate since July 2013 when Dalton's unemployment rate was 11.7 percent.
The Dalton area added 100 new jobs during August. But over the past year, Dalton shed 200 net jobs even as the size of the workforce continued to grow in the past year.
The number of initial claims for unemployment insurance, which is a measure of new layoffs, increased by 15.7 percent in metro Dalton.
There were 1,884 new claims for unemployment insurance filed in August, an increase of 255 from 1,629 in July. Most of the increase in claims came in manufacturing as Dalton's carpet-based economy continued to struggle from the sputtering recovery in the housing industry.
The state labor department said jobless claims in Dalton more than doubled the number the number in August 2013.
Across Georgia, metro Athens had the lowest area jobless rate in August at 6.4 percent, while metro Dalton had the highest at 10.7 percent.
Georgia's seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate for August was 8.1 percent, up from a revised 7.7 percent in July.
Georgia's unemployment rate last month was the highest among all U.S. states and was a full 2 percentage points above the nationwide rate of 6.1 percent in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.