With the holiday shopping season gearing up in November, local employers created new jobs and laid off fewer workers to help lower the Gainesville metropolitan area jobless rate to 4.1 percent — the lowest in the state.

The November rate is down from 4.6 percent in October, according to figures released Thursday by the Georgia Department of Labor.

The seasonality of hiring trends sent more people back into the workplace last month, “but the overall trend remains very positive for job seekers in our local economy,” said Tim Evans, vice president of economic development at the Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce.

Evans said the telling trend in these numbers is the increase of almost 3,500 workers in the Gainesville-Hall County labor force since November 2015. That’s a 3.8 percent increase.

“That’s a contrast to our Gainesville-Hall County population growth from 2010 to 2015, which had been growing at 1.6 percent per year,” Evans said.

Most of the job growth came in the goods-producing sector and the service-related industries, including retail, as well as manufacturing and construction.

The number of initial claims for unemployment insurance declined by 285, or 35.1 percent, to 526 in November, according to the department.

Over the year, claims were down by 146, or 21.7 percent.

Meanwhile, Georgia’s seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate for November was 5.3 percent, up from 5.2 percent in October. It was 5.5 percent in November 2015.