Here’s a look at rates in the Panhandle area.

Liberty County has the state’s lowest unemployment with 5.4%.  Jackson and Walton Counties also rank among the lowest in the state with 7.2% and 7.3% respectively.

Bay County is at 9.5%, up from 6.1% this time last year and 9.1% last month.

The rate for Calhoun County is 8.5% compared to 5.2% this time last year and 8.4% in September.

Franklin County was at 4.6% this time last year and is now at 7.8%.  In September the rate was 7.1%.

Gulf County’s unemployment now sits at 9.9% an increase over last year’s rate of 6.5% and last month’s rate of 9.8%.

Last year in October, Holmes County was at a 5.2% unemployment rate that number has now risen to 7.5%.  Last month they were at 7.3%.

And in Washington County the rate is now 9.8% up from 6.6% in October 2008 and 9.6% in September of this year.

Overall the Panama City-Lynn Haven-Panama City Beach Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSAs) is at 9.5% in line with the U.S. rate and lower than Florida’s rate of 11.2%.

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Florida’s Unemployment Climbs but Panhandle Boasts Some of the Lowest Rates
11/20/09 - 02:59 PM

Associated Press

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Florida’s unemployment rate continues to climb.

he new jobless numbers released today show unemployment rose to 11.2 percent in October.

That’s a tenth of a percentage point higher than September’s adjusted rate (11.1 percent).

The number of unemployed Floridians topped 1 million in September and it remained slightly over that mark in October—1,027,000 out of a labor force of 9,175,000.

Three sectors of Florida’s economy have been hardest hit. Trade, transportation and utilities; professional and business services, and construction account for more than two-thirds of the state’s job losses.

Health care has been the only area of the economy that has seen growth for most of the year.

While the state is continuing to shed jobs, the rate of loss dropped. Florida had 339,600 fewer nonagricultural jobs in October than the same month last year. That’s a decline of 4.4 percent compared to 5.4 percent for September.

“When you look at the economic activity now, in terms of concerns about how long the downturn will last or when will the recovery begin, we do have to remember a year ago we were concerned about being, are we going into the second great depression? In the current time period, now we’re concerned about is the recession over and has the recovery started.”

“Most of the unemployed are job losers, those on lay offs, 66 percent. The second highest percentage is re-entrants, those that have entered the labor market looking for work at 21 percent. Job leavers is very low at 5.7 meaning there’s less mobility in the job market when it’s slow so there’s less people leaving, voluntarily, their jobs and seeking new jobs.”

Rust says forecasters are keeping an eye on recent reports about late mortgage payments which could reflect more foreclosure problems.

“Late payments are up which are an indicator of future foreclosures. These were just reported earlier this week, that late payments and mortgage holders around the state are up nationwide so we do have some concerns that we need to watch the foreclosure data and there could be an increase.”

State officials say that if foreclosures increase it could be even longer before Florida starts to rebound from this recession.