The statistics are very clear. Nearly one in every five Dallas County residents is unemployed.

At 19.1 percent, Dallas County now ranks as  the third worst in the state in unemployment, and economic development and the area does not appear to be in position to help make a significant dent in that number anytime soon.

While 19.1 percent is a troubling number, there is some thought that it does not reflect the industrial well-being of this county.

Major industries are already operating at near full staff and have continued to hire through sluggish economic times. True, some have altered some shift work to account for some slow downs in production, but those slow downs do not affect the unemployment figure.

And, according to local economic officials, local industries have maintained staffing levels or slightly increased from last year. Yet, the unemployment figures released Friday show the number of unemployed residents increased in June by slightly more than 500.

Regardless of how you read the figures, unemployment continues to be a significant problem for our area, affecting just about every segment of our economy.

Fewer people working leads to less average income, less spending money, less sales taxes generated and tighter governmental budgets and services.

With schools already opening on ever dwindling budgets, fewer people working mean fewer sales taxes generated to support education budgets.

It is becoming very clear that the efforts of government to stimulate economic growth in Alabama’s Black Belt have been met with some success, but a long-term solution seems to have avoided us.

If today we are sitting at unemployment figures at or worse than those in recent years, then a different approach is needed.

What do we have to lose? At this point, nothing.