He's had only two calls from prospective employers, one a grocery store and another a fast-food restaurant, and the job at Sonic went to a teenager who needed a summer job.
"I've kind of given up," the 36-year-old Franklin man said. "I haven't filled out an application in a month. You go online, and there are no jobs there."
Frustrated workers like Walsh are part of the reason that Tennessee's statewide unemployment rate went down from 10.8 percent in June to July's 10.7 percent.
It's not that the labor market is getting better. Rather, more Tennesseans are discouraged and no longer on the job hunt, which excludes them from the unemployment statistics.
Because of the discouraged-worker factor, a majority of Tennessee's 95 counties saw a drop in unemployment rates in July from a month earlier, according to the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development. The unemployment rate dropped in 78 counties, increased in 14 counties and remained the same in three others.
Nationally, more than 14 million people are unemployed and another 6 million have abandoned the job search out of frustration, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., a job-placement firm.
If discouraged workers were counted in the national unemployment rate, the U.S. rate would have been 16.3 percent in July instead of the official 9.4 percent rate, according to one analysis.
Tennessee's worst unemployment rate was in Scott County at 19.6 percent, and the lowest total was in Lincoln County at 6.9 percent in July. Williamson County had the third-lowest rate at 8.4 percent and Davidson County was eighth lowest at 9.2 percent.
Perry sees declineThe biggest decrease was in Perry County, where a special stimulus program has put 343 residents to work. Unemployment dropped from 22.1 percent in June to 19.3 percent in July, and for the first time in months, Perry County no longer has the worst jobless rate in Tennessee.
(2 of 2)Unemployment rate goes down in most Tennessee countiesReal Estate Outlook: Encouraging Numbers
