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COLUMBIA (WACH) - South Carolina's unemployment rate has fallen again for the fourth month in a row and according to an expert, that's a good sign.

On Friday the Department of Employment and Workforce released their latest jobless data that showed May's unemployment rate of 11 percent was down one half a percentage point from April's 11.5 percent rate.

"South Carolina used to be at the rock bottom at the lowest unemployment rate. We're in better shape than a lot of states right now. You know Nevada, Florida, California, all with higher unemployment rates than us," said Doug Woodward, USC Professor of Economics.
 
Woodward said the new numbers are great news for a struggling state.

"You have to go back just a few months ago when people were predicting we'd have a 15 percent unemployment rate and it would only go up. That's the kind of pessimism when everything seems to be falling apart and people just think it's going to worse. Now we are going in the right direction," said Woodward.

Woodward attributes the positive trend to job creation, partly due to the stimulus.
 
"Take for example not to far from here, the Savannah River Plant has been adding lots of jobs that's just coming in right now. That stimulus money will continue to be spent throughout this year. No question about it - it does create jobs, probably just enough to put us over the top in terms of net job creation," said Woodward.

But the professor said even though we are moving in the right direction, the numbers are still far from where we would like to be.

"We're still going to have to feel that anxiety, I think for sometime to come because a double digit unemployment rate, that's what we have right now and that's not good," said Woodward.

Click here for the entire report from the Department of Employment and Workforce.