If you're looking for a job, you might want to live in Oconee County.
The small county nestled against Athens-Clarke and Barrow counties had the lowest unemployment rate in the state of Georgia, according to data collected by the Georgia Department of Labor from December 2015. Oconee County boasted a 3.8 percent unemployment rate.
That's 1.7 percent lower than the 5.5 percent state-wide unemployment rate Georgia posted in December.
GDOL spokesman John Ard said the department calculates unemployment rates each month using data including all civilians aged 16 and older. There is no cut-off retirement age and the data does not include non-civilian military personnel.
The high employment rate in Oconee County also doesn't necessarily mean everybody works within the county.
"They have a job somewhere," Ard said. "They just live in Oconee."
So why is Oconee County's unemployment rate so low? Ard has an educated guess.
"It's a bedroom community of the University of Georgia," he said.
But not every county can be as lucky as Oconee. Clay County, sitting near the southwestern corner of the state, suffers the highest unemployment rate at 9.8 percent. It's one of 29 counties (18 percent of Georgia) that suffers from an unemployment rate of 7 percent or greater.
Most of Georgia (34 percent) has an unemployment rate between 5 and 5.9 percent. That includes Fulton and DeKalb counties.
How does your county stack up? Click here to find out.
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