More Georgians competing for fewer jobs

The state’s jobless rate rose again in September to reach 6.5 percent — up 44 percent from the same month last year, the state Labor Department announced Thursday.

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Joey Ivansco/jivansco@ajc.com

Ebony Thomas, 25, of Decatur stuffs envelopes at 9 to 5, a nonprofit advocate group for working women. The Spelman College graduate says, ‘I am not trying to get rich. I just want to survive.’

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That official jobless rate, climbing from 6.3 percent in August, has now hit its highest level since late 1992.

“This suggests that we are experiencing a deteriorating job market here in Georgia,” said Michael Thurmond, state labor commissioner.

Job-seekers outnumber job vacancies five to one, he said.

That kind of ratio is all too obvious, agreed Ebony Thomas, 25, of Decatur, a job-seeker since August.

A Spelman College graduate with a degree in political science — not very practical, she sighs — she went back to school for a certificate in child care.

Since late summer, she’s been taking the occasional short-term substitute job while looking for full-time work.

She wants to earn $12 to $14 an hour, she said. “I am not trying to get rich. I just want to survive.”

Child care centers often hire in late spring, so this is not the best time to be searching. Still, Thomas has found openings — just not a job.

“I think I interview very well, but there are so many people looking for a job,” she said. “I may be the more qualified, but if they can get someone else and pay them a little less, why not?”

Nationally, the official jobless rate is 6.1 percent while the number of weekly new jobless claims not caused by hurricanes has been averaging more than 450,000.

That is the highest claims have been since late 2001.

About 9.2 million people in the U.S. are officially unemployed, while more than 3.7 million people are receiving jobless benefits, according to the Employment Training Administration.

“The labor market is extremely weak,” wrote Goldman Sachs economists Thursday in an e-mail note to clients. To the employer, that means the ability to pick and choose among candidates.

To the job-seeker, that means a lot of wheel-spinning. Amanda Barlow, 27, of College Park lost her job as an administrative assistant at IBM in late September.

She has made several trips to private temporary staffing agencies.

“They say fill out an online application and they’ll call, but they never do,” Barlow said Thursday. “It’s very frustrating.”

In Georgia during the first nine months of this year, about 467,000 laid-off workers have filed initial claims for unemployment insurance — up 39 percent from the same period of 2007.

With the slump in real estate, many laid-off workers come from construction jobs. But cuts have also come from service jobs and manufacturing, which has been shedding positions for years.

Most recently, the slide in consumer spending has begun to have an impact, Thurmond said. “We are beginning to see more retrenchment in the retail sector. That is new, and that is especially troubling.”

Retailers used to hire during October and November to gear up for holiday shopping. With consumer spending in doubt, so is that hiring.

The slump in real estate meant construction jobs were at the cutting edge of the downturn.

Among the victims is Carl Bee, 48, of East Point, who lost his construction job.

Looking through the lists of openings at the Department of Labor’s career center, he said he was optimistic.

“With the help of the Lord, I’ll find something,” he said. “You can’t keep a good man down.”

During the past year, the number of payroll jobs in Georgia has fallen by 53,200. That is the largest September-to-September drop since the 64,500 lost between 2001 and 2002, Thurmond said.

Hardest hit have been the metro areas of Dalton, Gainesville and Rome, where the dearth of home construction has been devastating to carpet-makers, Thurmond said.

Yet some skills are still in demand.

Accounting and finance experts are still being hired, said Tennille Hall, regional vice president in Atlanta for Ajilon Finance, a division of staffing company Adecco.

“We are seeing growth in smaller, midsized companies,” she said. “We are placing people at jobs from clerk to controller.”

At least in that kind of hiring, the nation’s financial crisis and economic slowdown have had modest impact, she said. “Clients are taking longer to make decisions. But it’s budgeting season and the need for accounting doesn’t go away.”

Among other sectors where hiring has been strong are health care and education. Government, too, was a growth sector — but falling tax revenues have undercut budgets.

Peggy Clark, 49, of Decatur lost her job with the Georgia Department of Human Resources in January. She’s been looking for a job since. “It’s hard. There’s just not that much out there,” Clark said.

The economy now suffers from a vicious cycle. Job losses cause consumer woes that damage housing and retail markets, which burdens the economy and forces still more job cuts.

In the middle are people, many in painful circumstances.

Clark, who has five children, said she and her husband, who also is out of work, are three months behind on their mortgage. “We’re on the verge of losing our home,” Clark said.

She said she hoped to find an office job like the one she had at the state. “But at this point, I’ll take just about anything just to put food on the table.”