Hall County's jobs picture looks to be getting brighter.

The state Labor Department reported Tuesday the preliminary unadjusted unemployment rate in the metro Gainesville area decreased to 8.5 percent in March, down four-tenths of a percentage point from a revised 8.9 percent in February.

The jobless rate in the metro Gainesville area in March a year ago was 9.2 percent.

Kit Dunlap, president of the Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce, said the employment picture is improving enough that the chamber recently decided to hold a local job fair on June 22 at the Georgia Mountains Center.

"We think that things are better," Dunlap said. "... It's been a while since we've had a job fair. We had a career expo, but we're actually going to have a job fair."

Dunlap pointed to improvements in retail, industry, health care and tourism as other indicators Hall County is continuing to creep out of the recession.

"We've been watching certainly industry, certainly even small business, a little bit of retail," she said. "We've been watching that and are aware that things seem to be improving."

The unemployment rate decreased because there were 300 new jobs in Gainesville in March, mostly in the service-related industries. There also were fewer layoffs in construction and wholesale trade.

"The unemployment rate decreased in Gainesville, as well as in all of the state's other 24 local areas," Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said. "This is encouraging, and hopefully indicates that a modest recovery may be building throughout the state."

The lowest rate, at 7.3 percent was in metro Athens, while the highest rate, at 11.7 percent, was in the Altamaha region around Dublin.

The jobless rate in the Georgia Mountains region fell from an adjusted 9.4 percent in February to 9 percent in March.

Georgia's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for March was 10 percent, down two-tenths of a percentage point, from a revised 10.2 percent in February. The state's jobless rate was also 10.2 percent in March 2010.

March marked the 42nd consecutive month that Georgia has exceeded the national unemployment rate, which is currently 8.8 percent.