The state of Georgia is moving forward on hundreds of federal stimulus projects worth more than $6.4 billion, but Carroll County workers have yet to feel an impact.

The official stimulus Web site, Recovery.org, touts 106,000 jobs created or saved in Georgia, even as unemployment claims are up about 4.3 percent from this time last year in Carroll County, according to Dr. Joey Smith, professor of economics at the University of West Georgia.

Smith, who is well known in the region for his popular Economic Forecast Breakfast in October, believes that job prospects have gotten worse rather than better, despite the billions in government dollars moving through the economy.

“For our area, what it indicates is that we’re actually a little worse off, at least in terms of employment, than last year in August. The unemployment claims are up, it means that we’re still shedding jobs,” said Smith. “That doesn’t mean that we’re not necessarily going to turn around in the near future, it just means that right now we’re just in a bad situation.”

Smith acknowledged that Carroll County unemployment claims have fallen from 1,860 to 865 between July and August, but noted that those figures fail to account for discouraged workers leaving the work force, or increased seasonal employment as firms gear up for the Christmas season. While most economists are predicting a near-term economic turnaround for the nation, the West Georgia region appears to be lagging behind due to fiscal dependence on its faltering construction industry and sputtering housing market.

“Judging by the numbers I’m looking at here, it doesn’t look like Carroll County or any of the surrounding counties are on the verge of a turnaround like we are in the nation,” Smith said.

Smith believes that retail sales this Christmas, rather than government contracts, could be pivotal in determining whether Georgia — and Carroll in particular — will be able to escape the recession.

“I’m not terribly confident that we’re going to have a fast turnaround in the next quarter, but I think that Christmas this year is going to make a big difference in the local economy, because if we have a good Christmas season, if there’s some pent-up demand, and people take that demand to the store, we’re going to see retail bounce back a little bit, and hopefully that will spread to other areas of the economy,” said Smith. “If retail goes through a turnaround, we can expect the rest of the economy to move too.”

Daniel Jackson, CEO and president of Carroll County Chamber Commerce and Carroll Tomorrow, sees some sectors of the economy quietly hiring a few employees, but doesn’t credit the stimulus.

“Everybody I talk to sort of shrugs their shoulders and puts their hands up and says ‘What stimulus money?’ I can’t off the top of my head think of anybody that’s gotten stimulus money,” said Jackson. “When we have this conversation with community leadership, most folks say there’s money out there, but they haven’t seen any of it.”

Carrollton Mayor Wayne Garner said there are no stimulus projects ongoing in the city.

“I’ve looked at the stimulus package and money, but for a city our size, the requirements in many cases are just too onerous for what you get,” he said. “Honestly, those are mainly big-ticket items for larger cities, and that’s the way they structured it, billions of dollars for AIG and Morgan Stanley.”

There are several regional projects in the works, but they have resulted in only a handful of jobs. The city of Villa Rica is adding two police officers to the city and installing new water lines using stimulus money, Bowdon is rebuilding a $2.7 million bridge, and a Carroll County Water Authority project to put modernize water meters is 60 percent funded by a government loan.

There are other assorted small projects, but finding an exhaustive list is next to impossible, because in most cases the government itself doesn’t know. The first report from states on the projects currently under way isn’t due until mid-October, and the myriad of ways money can be disbursed add to the confusion. Even Gov. Sonny Perdue’s office doesn’t know the actual scope of stimulus-related spending and resulting job creation in Georgia, because the federal government often bypasses the state and doles money out directly, according to the governor’s spokesman.

If current trends continue and the region experiences a jobless recovery, it could lead to more residents seeking employment outside the county, or even permanently moving from the suburbs to larger cities in order to be save money and time on commuting. UWG’s Dr. Smith sees this as a probable outcome, regardless of the rate of economic recovery.

“In the short term you’re probably going to see people expand their job search, meaning if they lost their job in Carroll County, they’re probably going to look in Douglas county, and if they can’t find a job there, they may go look in Atlanta, or across Atlanta,” said Smith. “We already have a lot of people that commute from Carroll to Atlanta, but that could increase.”

But despite the fact that West Georgia lags behind the nation in stemming the tide of job losses, Smith believes that the region will eventually recover when consumers get their confidence back.

“Things typically happen a little bit slower in counties that are a little further out. We’re probably going to see the recovery go a little bit slower here than we do at the national level, but when you turn on the TV and you see ‘recovery,’ that has an effect [on consumer confidence],” Smith said.