Georgia’s Unemployment Rate in July at its Lowest in Over a Decade

Georgia’s unemployment rate for in July has decreased for the sixth consecutive month to 4.7 percent, which is the lowest it’s been in over a decade.

The rate is down one-tenth of a percentage point from 4.8 percent in June.

However, from June to July, Georgia lost 14,100 jobs, a 0.3 percent decline which Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said is due to seasonal factors.

“We saw about 14,000 less jobs in the month of July as opposed to the month of June,” said Butler. “However, if we remember, back in June we had a very large increase in jobs. Some of these may be some seasonal factors involved. First of all, there’s some very large construction projects which have ended and I would expect to see a lot of those persons that were in those jobs on other construction jobs here shortly. Also with school going back early like it did this year in a lot of places, some of those summer jobs that have been out there have probably gone away and a lot of those kids that were in those jobs have gone back to school, which probably affected our labor force number a good bit. However, all is not lost because we did see just under 4,000 Georgians go back to work, which is probably the best number in the job’s report.”
On another note, unemployment claims were up slightly by 10.9 percent due to seasonal losses. However, over the year unemployment claims were down by 20.2 percent, from 35,639 in July 2016.

Butler adds that Georgia continues to set records for employed Georgians.

“Georgia continues to have very strong job growth and employment,” said Butler. “As a matter of fact, in the month of July we set yet another record for total employment, which we are pretty much setting every single month as we continue to see Georgians go back to work. Also our job growth is outpacing the nation, we are at 2.2 percent job growth as opposed to the nation’s 1.5 percent. So we’re growing a lot faster than the national average and I expect that to continue to go.”

The GDOL’s online job listings are on employgeorgia.com and Butler said the listings on there are increasing.

“We saw a 3 percent increase in job listings online going from June to July,” said Butler. “Matter of fact, we have about 10 percent more job listings this July as we had last year. The job listings that we’re seeing out there are also good jobs. About 34 percent of those were in STEM related areas, also the vast majority of those jobs require at least a 2-year degree or higher so these are good quality jobs.”

For more information, visit employgeorgia.com.