The unemployment rate for the Northwest Georgia region at the start of 2022 has seen a slight increase, but unemployment remains below the national average in the area, and across the state.

A slight increase in unemployment is common during the first two months of the year due to seasonal hiring by retail stores for the Christmas Holidays.   There are still plenty of jobs out there, and there are still plenty of people working.  An increase of a one or two points in the unemployment rate doesn’t mean that people aren’t looking for jobs.  Often, it is because people are transitioning between seasonal employment and full-time employment and that has happened almost every year since unemployment numbers have been recorded.

In fact, the problem that Georgia faces right now is there are more jobs than workers.

“Even though we continue to see Georgia’s workforce be successfully employed in record-breaking numbers, there is still much more work to do as we continue to see hundreds of thousands of jobs needed to be filled,” Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said in an employment report released Thursday.

The non-seasonally adjusted jobless rate rose in January across Northwest Georgia, but unemployment in most counties remained below the U.S. rate of 4% at the start of 2022.