Carroll County’s jobless rate is more than a point higher than the state average, according to Georgia Department of Labor unemployment numbers for the month of June.

According to the department’s Web site, the county’s unemployment rate for June rose to 11.8 percent, a full point higher than it was the previous month. Statewide, the rate surpassed the 10 percent mark at 10.1.

David Boldt, chairman of the Economics Department at the University of West Georgia, said that summer normally sees a bit of an increase in the jobless rate because more high school and college students are entering into the work force on a temporary basis. For that reason, he said, it’s important to look at the rate not from month to month but from year to year.

Even from that perspective, the county unemployment rate is bleak.

In June of 2008, the jobless rate was 6.7 percent, more than 5 points below June 2009. Compare that to the statewide rate, which is up 3.5 percent from last year and the national rate which is up 4 percent, and it shows that Carroll County is suffering more, at least in some part, from the recession than other parts of the state and the country.

The reason, Boldt said, is that Carroll County has in the past had a high percentage of the work force in manufacturing and contracting fields, both of which have been hit especially hard compared to other more white-collar vocations.

In 2008, 21 percent of all jobs in Carroll County were in manufacturing, compared to a mere 10 percent of jobs in Atlanta being in that field.

“I think Carroll County has been hit slightly worse than other places due to the nature of work that’s available here,” Boldt said.

But there are some fields in the area that are actually showing growth, and some more than others.

According to a study done by the UWG Economics Department looking at the availability of jobs on online message boards, Boldt said there are a good number of jobs in the medical and sales fields in the county, both of which are showing increased availability for the simple reason that employers in those fields are not necessarily footing the entire cost of paying their employees.

For instance, Boldt said, in the medical field, HMOs and other insurance providers pay a portion of most procedures performed, and because medical companies, like Tanner Health System, receive a large portion of their revenue from the federal government and from private insurance companies, it can better afford to maintain more employees.

In addition, he said, people are less likely in tough economic times to sacrifice medical treatment than other spending not seen as necessities.

“In economics we talk about the inelasticity of demand,” he said. “Even if times are not that good you are going to spend money on medical care.”

In a similar vein, sales jobs are growing in availability because employees are paid largely based on the amount of merchandise that they sell. If they sell little, they are paid little, and most of their salaries then come from customers instead of from the company itself.

Ultimately, Boldt said, there are jobs to be had, but in such a market as this, applicants are often forced to undergo additional training or take a position previously below his or her skill set.