Although the Carroll County unemployment rate rose again in October, seasonal employment is expected to help through the end of the calendar year.

According to numbers from the Georgia Department of Labor’s Web site, Carroll County’s jobless rate in October hit an even 11 percent, up from 10.7 percent in September. Of the 51,913 county residents in the work force, slightly less than 5,700 were unemployed in October, an increase of more than 150 unemployed workers from the previous month.

Daniel Jackson, head of the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce and Carroll Tomorrow, said the holiday season has historically quelled any major increases in the local unemployment rate, and hopefully, the same will prove true this year.

“We’re going to have to weather through this period that we’re going through, but there is a silver lining. It may look a little better in November and December,” Jackson said.

Jackson said the industrial sector is also showing improvement.

The Department of Labor announced last week that the state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose slightly to 10.2 percent in October, up one-tenth of a percentage point from a revised 10.1 percent in September.

The October state jobless rate was up 3.3 percentage points from 6.9 percent for the same time last year. For the first time in two years, Georgia’s unemployment rate matched the national rate at 10.2 percent. Since October of 2007, when both the national and state jobless rates were 4.8 percent, Georgia’s unemployment rate has exceeded the national rate, sometimes by multiple percentage points.

Much of the reason for the high state unemployment rate comes from the fact that the number of payroll jobs in October decreased 227,700, or 5.6 percent, from October of 2008. In addition, the state’s labor force decreased 139,015, or 2.9 percent, from 4.8 million in October 2008 to 4.7 million in October 2009.

In Carroll County, the number of individuals in the work force decreased significantly from 2008, dropping by more than 1,500 from October of 2008 through the end of last month. The holiday season could change that, though. The influx of retail and temporary seasonal jobs into the market as a whole could not only increase the workforce numbers but also the number of those actually employed.

Jackson said that recent regional numbers show that West Georgia is in better shape than other parts of the state. The city of LaGrange, in Troup County, has an October rate of 13.7 percent and Lawrenceville, northeast of Atlanta in Gwinnett County, has a jobless rate of 15.8 percent.

Even though the Carroll County numbers continue to increase, Jackson said, they’re not increasing by the margins that they were only months ago, and the fact that the number of job cuts has slowed in recent days may suggest that the employment market in the area has stabilized to some degree. He said an unemployment rate above 11 percent is never a good thing, but considering the toll taken by the national economic recession, the county could be in a much worse predicament.

“I think some sectors are just kind of slow right now, and the jobless rate is kind of hovering, and it’s going to be jumping around the area where it is a little bit,” Jackson said. “I guess that’s just sort of where we’re going to be until something significant happens.”

Where some sectors, namely the real estate and development markets, have continued to struggle in the last 12 months, Jackson said, the local industrial sector is beginning to bounce back and show some life. If that trend continues, the economic momentum may transfer to other sectors and the area economy as a whole may begin to show some real signs of improvement, Jackson said.

All that has yet to be seen, he said, and all area residents can do now is get out and treat this Christmas shopping season like any other, Jackson said.

“We’re still hanging in there, even statewide and nationally. It is what it is, though, given the economy and all the other circumstances. Obviously we don’t want to see that high a [jobless] number, but regionally we’re really looking better,” Jackson said. “I’m hoping next year we can really rebound. I really do believe that folks are looking for an opportunity for things to be better and looking to do something uplifting. We all need to be positive.”