February jobless claims double a year ago

About 86,500 Georgians filed for unemployment benefits last month, an improvement from January’s level but more than double that of a year ago, the state Department of Labor announced late Tuesday.

Officials didn’t highlight claims being down from January as a good sign since January typically means a burst of post-holiday job cuts.

In searching for overall trends, officials usually look to a year-to-year comparison.

This year, January was especially dismal: 120,139 people filed for benefits while the state unemployment rate climbed to 8.6 percent.

Last year, claims fell 38 percent from January to February. This year it was a 28 percent decline —- and February was far worse than it had been a year ago.

Claims in the state were 111 percent higher in February than during the same month of 2008.

Atlanta claims likewise jumped by that same percentage.

A year ago, job cuts were mostly construction and manufacturing.

Those sectors are still getting hit, but the layoffs have spread into retail, office work and temporary staffing agencies, officials said.

Metro Atlanta, the state’s largest job market, chalked up 36,608 new claims during February compared to 17,351 a year earlier.

But proportionally, the worst waves of layoffs came in Brunswick, a 180 percent increase over the year, and Athens, where filings climbed 167 percent.

The number of laid-off workers in the state receiving unemployment benefits is up 116 percent from February of 2008, but is still less than half the roughly 412,000 people who are officially job seekers.

With that situation in mind, the Labor Department is hosting a jobs fair today from 4 to 9 p.m. at the Georgia World Congress Center.