In the past two reporting periods, the unemployment rate in Mariposa County has fallen. That trend ended in October, as the jobless percentage climbed more than one percent, bringing it just below double-digits. The Employment Development Department released the latest figures last week.

Mariposa County’s latest statistics show that 9.9 percent of the local workforce was out of a job in October. The unemployment had fallen below nine percent for the first time in months in September, to 8.8 percent. That figure was down from 9.5 percent in August.

California’s overall unemployment continues to be a growing problem. In October, 12.3 percent of workers were without a job. At the start of 2009, just over 10 percent of people were unemployed. That figure is double what it was just two years ago. Statewide, some 2.3 million people are without jobs today.

California’s unemployment rate remained steady and held at around 12 percent in previous months. It remains the highest figure recorded since statistics have been kept.

Joblessness peaked locally at more than 13 percent last March. Even though lower than that, current figures are still some two percent higher than the same time period last year.

In fact, the rate is nearly double the September figures from several years past. In 2007, unemployment stood at 4.8 percent. In 2006, the September rate was 4.3 percent, and in 2005, it was 4.8 percent. Even in 1997, the year of the 100-year flood and the last time annual unemployment was over 10 percent, September’s rate was six percent.

Merced County jumped back up from 15.7 percent in September to 16.4 percent last month. That meant an end to a two-percent drop in unemployment in the neighboring county in two months.

In Madera County, the rate also leaped by more than a percent to 13.8. Tuolumne County went from holding steady at 12 percent to jumping up to 13.5 percent in October.

California’s highest level of unemployment is 30 percent in Imperial County, which is in the southeastern portion of the state. The lowest unemployment rate is in Marin County, where just 8.1 percent of the workforce doesn’t have a job.

There is some concern about the continued high level of unemployment at the state level. California’s unemployment insurance fund, which pays benefits to those out of work, is insolvent. The state is already borrowing from the federal government to pay those benefits. Unless the state increases employer taxes or reduces benefits, interest costs for the federal loans are expected to grow to about $1.5 billion by 2014- 15.

Nationally, the unemployment rate also grew last month, to 10.2 percent.