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Alabama Department of Labor Secretary Fitzgerald Washington announced the increase of Alabama’s unemployment rate on Friday.

Lowndes County has an unemployment rate of 18.7%, one of the highest percentages in the state.

The Lowndes County Area Chamber of Commerce is looking forward to creating new jobs for the area despite the unemployment rate and current pandemic.

“The hospital project that we’re interested in in Lowndes County will be a long term project, but will generate 175 new jobs for the county,” LCACOC President Dr. Ozelle Hubert said. “It’s the chamber’s priority.”

The state’s unemployment rate in July was 7.9%, an increase from June’s rate of 7.6%.

“Following several months of unemployment rate decreases, this month we saw a slight increase in our unemployment rate,” Washington said. “While we can all agree that the economy is definitely recovering, we will continue to have fluctuations as we continue to learn how to navigate in this new pandemic-related reality.”

The state has regained about half of the jobs lost from March to April.

“Nearly 200,000 jobs were lost from March to April, when we experienced the greatest shutdowns and layoffs,” Washington continued. “Since then, we’ve recovered approximately half of those jobs.”

For more information about how the Bureau of Statistics calculates the percentages, you can visit bls.gov/covid19/home.htm