Unemployment in Fayette County continued to rise in July with an 8.9 percent rate recorded by Georgia Department of Labor. A similar situation applied to Peachtree City where, for the first time, the rate climbed above 8 percent.

July’s preliminary figure of 8.9 percent for Fayette followed an 8.7 percent unemployment rate for June. This compares to a rate of 5.6 in July 2008. The number of jobless in Fayette County was listed as 4,637 out of a workforce of 52,327.

July in Peachtree City saw the unemployment rate climb to 8.1 percent compared to the 7.9 percent rate in June. The unemployment rate in July 2008 was 5.3 percent.

Historically, Fayette has registered among the lowest unemployment rates in the state through the 1980s, 1990s and early to mid 2000s.

Next door in Coweta County unemployment figures decreased for the first time in a year. June’s rate of 11.2 percent was replaced in July by a rate of 10.7. The same was true in Newnan, where unemployment decreased to 12.9 percent, down from 13.2 percent in June.

Widening the focus, unemployment in Atlanta’s 10 core counties represented in the Atlanta Regional Commission area increased from 10.3 percent in June to 10.4 percent in July, representing 225,348 people without jobs.

Unemployment in the 28-county Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area rose from 10.6 percent in June to 10.7 percent in July with 288,561 people unemployed.

The unemployment rate in Georgia also climbed from 10.1 percent in June to 10.3 percent in July, representing nearly one-half million people out of work. Across the country the picture improved somewhat, with the July rate decreasing by a tenth of a point to 9.4 percent, the equivalent of 14.462 million people with no work.

Georgia’s lowest unemployment numbers were recorded in Oconee County with a rate of 6.5 percent while the highest was in Jenkins County at 21.7 percent.

According to Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond, job losses in construction, manufacturing and other male-dominated industries have resulted in historically high levels of unemployment among Georgia males.

From December 2007, the official beginning of the recession, through May 2009, the number of men drawing state unemployment benefits increased from 34,136 to 880,612. In May 2009 jobless men constituted 57.6 percent of the 153,930 Georgians receiving unemployment insurance benefits.

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