The state cut $20 million in unemployment checks last week and the Employment Security Commission isn’t sure how long its federal loans will carry it into February.

The Georgia Department of Labor says the state’s unemployment rate shot to 8.1 percent in December, the highest rate reported since March 1983. The department reported Thursday that 393,168 Georgians were jobless. About 40 percent of those people are getting unemployment insurance.

The South Carolina Employment Security Commission says it’s run out of money again to pay unemployment benefits.

The chairman of a South Carolina Senate panel that oversees the Employment Security Commission says he wants detailed information on how the agency that calculates unemployment is doing its job.

The standoff between South Carolina’s governor and state officials continues, with only two days before the state must stop printing unemployment checks for 77,000 people.

A spokesman for South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford says a request for federal aid to pay benefits to out-of-work residents will be signed as soon as unemployment officials agree to certain conditions.

Three of South Carolina’s leading Republican lawmakers are slamming Gov. Mark Sanford for his reluctance to accept federal money that could save the state’s dwindling fund for unemployment benefits.

South Carolina’s unemployment rate has climbed to 8.4% after another 11,500 people lost their jobs last month. That’s well above the national average unemployment rate of 6.7% for November. WJBF News Channel 6’s Capitol reporter, Robert Kittle, has more.

An additional 11,500 people in South Carolina joined the ranks of the unemployed last month, driving the state’s jobless rate to 8.4 percent.

Georgia’s unemployment rate climbed to 7.5 percent in November, the highest rate in more than 25 years.

South Carolina’s jobless rate hit 8 percent in October - the highest in 25 years.  The state Employment Security Commission said Friday that 16,000 people joined the ranks of the unemployed in October. That’s a big increase from the September jobless rate of 7.3 percent. The head of the Employment Commission says the state added 4100 jobs, but the number of people filing for unemployment exceeded that. 

The state Labor Department says Georgia’s rate of unemployment rose to 7 percent in October, the highest in 16 years.

  More and more Georgia workers are being laid off.

The Georgia Department of Labor has announced that first-time claims for unemployment insurance benefits in October increased by 75 percent from the same month last year.

The current economic downturn is no doubt having an effect on the local unemployment rate.