Surry County’s unemployment rate remains above 11 percent and is likely to stay high due to a decline in summer job opportunities and the demise of an employment program for youths, an official says.

“I’m expecting it to kind of stay stagnant,” Bobbi Wessling, manager of the N.C. Employment Security Commission in Mount Airy, said of the outlook for the next few months.

Surry County’s jobless rate stands at 11.4 percent, based on the latest figures available which are for May, the same rate as in April.

Only Rockingham County (12.6 percent) has higher unemployment than Surry among the six-county Northwest Piedmont statistical area that also includes Stokes, Yadkin, Forsyth and Davie. Surry has been above the 11-percent mark for months.

Traditionally, some relief in joblessness comes with the arrival of warmer weather and the opening of seasonal positions in such areas as agriculture and construction.

“I don’t know that they’re doing as much hiring as they have in the past,” Wessling said Tuesday of seasonal-oriented employers.

The local Employment Security Commission office continues to receive job orders from entities seeking workers. “But it’s just at a much-slower pace than it has been in years past,” the ESC manager said. “Employers are certainly being more cautious in their hiring.”

One major handicap for Surry’s workforce this summer is the absence of a jobs program for youths which was launched in 2009 with the help of federal stimulus funds. Last year, the program geared toward those in the 16-to-early-20s age group put 240 Surry Countians to work.

This year, however, it fell victim to budget cuts in Washington. “So that’s a big bite,” Wessling said of the program’s loss.

Meanwhile, positions that normally have become available in the summer for students and others are increasingly being filled by “year-round” workers, Wessling said. “They’re taking the jobs up,” she added of that group.

The local ESC official says there is nothing on the horizon to trigger a substantial improvement in the unemployment picture, but there is also no reason to expect job conditions to worsen significantly from where they are now.

Surry’s labor force totals 33,632 persons, according to the latest figures, of which 29,898 are employed.

Contact Tom Joyce at tjoyce@mtairynews.com or at 719-1924.