OC’s jobless rate rises, SC’s drops

A reversal of fortune for the Oconee unemployment rate during the first month of the year. The state today released job figures for January. They show another decrease in the statewide rate, from 6.6% in January to 6.4% in December. Oconee’s latest unemployment numbers are headed in the wrong direction. For December, 6.6% of the county’s workforce was actively looking for work. In January, that percentage rose to 7.3%. In Seneca Saturday, a Democratic hopeful for Lieutenant Governor, Bakari Sellers, indicated that he takes the state’s figures with a grain of salt. Sellers said, “I would argue that we have many more people who are actually dropping out of the labor pool because they’ve been unemployed so long.”