Georgia hard hit as national joblessness hits 8.1 percent

The U.S. economy bled 651,000 jobs last month, capping the worst three months of job loss since military production shut down at the end of World War II, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

With losses across nearly every sector, the official unemployment rate shot to 8.1 percent, its highest level since 1983.

Georgia, facing even higher unemployment, will be adding $25 to unemployment checks, which average $292 a week, said Michael Thurmond, labor commissioner.

The state will distribute that money, which comes from the federal stimulus package, to roughly 180,000 people receiving benefits. More than 200,000 other jobless Georgians have exhausted benefits or are not eligible.

For instance, electrician Jerome Jackson, 53, of Atlanta can’t get the unemployment checks because he has been furloughed without pay — not laid off.

“Contract work is cyclical — these kinds of work slowdowns I recognize are part of this business,” he said. “But it does feel worse than usual because there is so much bad news.”

Most of the misfortune for blue-collar workers is pegged to the freeze in commercial construction.

The number of jobless electricians has more than tripled in the past year, said Gene O’Kelly, business manager for local 613 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. “And we expect to see it get worse.”

But the job market has been pounding on white collar employees as well: The unemployment rate for workers with less than a high school diploma is 12.6 percent, a 70 percent jump in the past year. College graduates still have a much lower jobless rate — 4.1 percent — but that level is nearly double what it was a year ago.

Brad Williams, 39, of East Cobb, was director of online revenue for an Atlanta hotel when he was cut at the end of December. Williams left with two weeks severance pay and has filed for unemployment benefits.

And now he is thinking about a return to school, perhaps to become an entrepreneur. “After 14 years in hospitality, maybe this is my calling to get out of the industry.”

Georgia’s $25 sweetener will be available to anyone filing a valid claim before Jan. 1, 2010, and will end July 3, 2010. Income tax also will be temporarily suspended on the first $2,400 of unemployment benefits paid to each claimant.

However, that modest aid will not help to everyone with job woes.

Even among the officially jobless, more than half are not receiving the benefits. Many ran through benefits and could still not find a job — nearly one-in-four of the jobless go at least six months. Others were self-employed, so they had no employer paying into the system. Some were ineligible because they quit jobs or were fired for cause — and many more employers have been appealing the eligibility of their former workers.

Friday’s jobs report showed losses in a range of sectors from manufacturing and grocers to architects’ firms and legal services. Only healthcare showed significant gains.

Kelly Kinder, 28, of Atlanta, was laid off from an ad agency in September. She scrambled, hitting the Internet job boards, networking with acquaintances and going on any interview possible.

In February, she landed a job in the marketing department at DeKalb Medical Center, a position that hadn’t existed before she was hired.

Even in sectors that seem to be melting down there can be opportunities.

Building may have stopped, but someone must still manage completed projects, said Harry L. Conley, president of 75-employee Fifth Street Management Co., which handles top-of-the-line properties.

In the past 14 months, the company has more than doubled in size. Fifth Street’s role is to save money for both tenants and owners, Conley said. “When the business cycle turns down, the value of what we do takes center stage.”

Georgia’s jobless rate hit 8.6 percent in January and has been higher than the national average for more than a year.

Most economists have predicted that unemployment will top out at about 9 percent. That estimate could start to seem optimistic, warned Edmund Hyland, Atlanta-based global investment specialist for JP Morgan Private Bank.

“If you have six months more like this, you may be looking at double-digit unemployment rates,” he said. But my gut — and maybe this is just being optimistic — is that we are moving close to the bottom.”