That grim pool of the officially jobless continues to shrink.

The chart above shows the combined total of unemployed in Broward and Miami-Dade, which was just under 220,000 people in the December report issued last week. That’s down 19 percent from the prior year. The pool of unemployed first started shrinking in August, when the official unemployment rate had just started to drop in Broward and was down for two months straight in Miami-Dade.

While the rate declines can seem modest — down from 10.5 percent in December 2010 to 8.9 percent last month for Broward and from 13.4 percent to 10.2 percent in Miami-Dade — statistically, the declines are pretty dramatic. The swing represented a 15.2 percent decline in Broward and a 23 percent drop in Miami-Dade.

By actually measuring the decline in the unemployed, the change becomes more obvious. At the end of 2010, Broward counted just under 102,000 people unemployed, compared to about 87,000 now — a 15 percent drop. Miami-Dade’s unemployed rolls went from 168,000 to 133,000 — a 21 percent drop.

Those numbers shrink when someone who is unemployed finds a job, but they also decline when someone who is unemployed stops looking for one, too. So it’s not all good news, but the statistics certainly capture a positive trend.

The Miami Herald’s Economic Time Machine tracks South Florida’s recovery from the Great Recession by charting 60 local indicators. Visit ETM’s online headquarters at miamiherald.com/economic-time-machine for the latest updates.