Calhoun County’s unemployment rate held steady at 10 percent in June, while the state rate dropped to 10.3 percent, according to numbers released Friday by the state.

The head of the Alabama Department of Industrial Relations, which released the figures, called the state rate the best in a year. Some economists, however, cautioned that unemployment was likely to remain high for the foreseeable future.

The rate for Calhoun County represented 5,300 people out of work and looking for jobs, according to Industrial Relations. The rate also was 10 percent in May, when 5,273 people were on the hunt for work. Statewide, 215,813 were out of work but looking in June.

Tom Surtees, director of the Department of Industrial Relations acknowledged that for the hundreds of thousands of jobless in the state, the slight improvement in the rate was little comfort. Still, it is an improvement, he said in a press release.

“This is the first significant drop in our unemployment rate that we’ve experienced for some time,” Surtees said. “We are certainly glad to see it.”

Economists said it could be a long time before any recovery is widely felt in the labor market.

Robert Reed, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Alabama, said manufacturing and the housing market continue to present problems, and that credit remained tight.

“At the same time it’s still not real clear how robust this recovery is,” Reed said.

There was some slight improvement in Calhoun County’s manufacturing sector, which accounted for what small increase in total employment there was here –- an estimated 100 jobs.

At Anniston’s Lee Brass, eight or nine workers have been hired for full-time, permanent positions after starting as temps, according to Bruce L. Jameson, the company’s president and chief executive officer. Lee has added a total of about 30 temporary workers since September 2009, Jameson said.

The company has managed to grow by diversifying its product offerings and customer base, Jameson said. That has come mainly by watching where its competitors have cut back and moving in to pick up their slack, he said.

“We try to say, ‘What’s everybody else doing,’ and we do the opposite,” Jameson said.

The company has ramped up its business making copper-nickel parts for the Navy, making lead-free pipe fittings to comply with a new California standard and has offered extra machining services to regular customers for its valves, which are used in products such as fire hydrants.

Keivan Deravi, a professor of economics at Auburn Unviersity Montgomery, agreed that such steps can help individual business, but that they’re not likely to fuel an overall economic recovery.

“It’s a band-aid,” Deravi said. He attributed much of what growth there has been in manufacturing to buyers looking to restock their inventory after waiting out the crash. Once the stocks were replenished, that buying tapered off, he said. Jameson, at Lee Brass, acknowledged that trend, and agreed it presented a challenge.

Still, any growth is growth.

Ahmad Ijaz, an economic researcher at the University of Alabama, said employment figures have been slowly improving for three months. “It’s a good sign for the economy,” he said.

Ijaz, who works for the Center for Business and Economic Research, said he expects the recovery to continue through the summer, but it will be in small doses because “it was a very deep recession.”

Reporting by The Associated Press was included in this report.

Contact Metro Editor Ben Cunningham at 256-235-3542.