Though economic forecasters say the country is now out of recession, the length of Haralson County’s unemployment lines continues to paint a bleak picture of the local job market.

Numbers released Thursday by the Georgia Department of Labor show Haralson County unemployment up a tenth of a point from November to December, rising from 11.3 percent to 11.4 percent in just one month. This comes only a matter of weeks since the announcement that the Georgia unemployment rate had risen to 10.3 percent in December, matching the record high reported in July and up from 10.1 percent in November.

Locally, the rise in unemployment from November to December is not necessarily an uncommon occurrence, according to Dr. David Boldt, chairman of the department of economics at the University of West Georgia’s Richards College of Business. Last year, the jobless rate swelled from November to December, as the number of those seeking employment went up during that time, possibly caused both by the number of high school and college students seeking work on their Christmas holiday as well as those seeking work to make up for the amount spent on gifts. This year, however, the work force actually shrunk from November to December, albeit slightly, and the number of those unemployed in the county rose, from 1,436 in November to 1,447 in December.

The most troubling trend illustrated in the most recent numbers, Boldt said, is the drastic increase in the December unemployment rate from the previous year.

December 2009 numbers show nearly a 3-point jump in the jobless rate from December of 2008, and if economic officials are correct, Boldt said, these numbers may not start to improve for some time.

“The key comparison is that it’s well up from a year ago,” Boldt said. “Even though, officially, the recession is over and the [gross domestic product] is starting to turn positive, unemployment is a lagging indicator, and most forecasts say it will take some time to improve.”

In such economic times, it may be hard for some to be optimistic, though there are many in the local commercial and industrial community who are hopeful that 2010 will be the year that the economy begins to bounce back.

The most optimistic aspect of the unemployment rate is that despite the fact that unemployment is up considerably from last year’s December rate of 8.6 percent, the rate has dipped somewhat since June, at which time Haralson County saw an unemployment rate of 13.1 percent.

According to the West Georgia Regional Update compiled quarterly by Richards College of Business, “there is reason to be optimistic that unemployment rates will begin to decline as we enter the spring of 2010; however, the rate declines are likely to be relatively slow, not evenly spread across all industries in the region, and halting.”