Georgia’s jobless rate dropped to 6.9 percent in December, its lowest level in eight months, as the economy continued to recover from a summer swoon, the state Department of Labor announced Thursday.
But most of the monthly drop, from 7.2 percent in November, apparently came from people leaving the work force rather than from job growth.
The Labor Department said the state added only 900 jobs overall in December. But based on a separate survey by the same agency, the number of people working or actively looking for jobs dropped by more than 13,000, to 4.7 million.
The latter drop helps cut the jobless rate. That’s because government statisticians calculating the rate don’t count people who have stopped actively looking for work because they retired, became disabled, went back to school or gave up.
Those numbers also don’t quite reflect the challenges facing folks like Montae Glenn, 27. He would rather have a full-time job, but he’s cobbling together a living from two part-time jobs.
“It’s hard out here,” said Glenn, of Decatur, who was riding a MARTA train Thursday to get from one part-time job to another.
For the past four years he’s had a part-time job as a sorter at UPS, the Sandy Springs package delivery giant.
But six months ago, he also got a three-day-a-week job as a stock clerk at discount retailer Dollar Tree. Thursday, his work day started a little after noon at one job and wouldn’t end until 3 a.m. Friday at the other job.
“I have to provide for my family, so I’ve got to get out here and get it,” he said.
Despite December’s anemic job growth, the net gain was enough to nudge the state’s job total a bit above 4.2 million, its highest level since the beginning of the 2007-2009 recession.
The Labor Department said holiday hiring in December added enough jobs to overcome job losses in other sectors, particularly temporary seasonal layoffs in the textile and construction industries.
Such job losses caused new applications for unemployment insurance in December to double from the previous month, to 57,510.
By most measures, however, the state’s job market has been on the mend since the Great Recession, when the jobless rate hit a high of 10.4 percent. Over the past year, the number of Georgians with jobs has grown about 2.7 percent.
“I’m especially pleased that we had a very strong 2.7 percent over-the-year job growth, which gave us our largest December-to-December growth since 1999,” said State Labor Commissioner Mark Butler.
Most of that job growth over the past year has been in business service jobs and trade, transportation and warehousing, the agency said.
Jennifer Clark hopes job growth will translate into a permanent position before her job as a contractor runs out in the summer.
“It’s been a little tricky,” said Clark, 32, of Fayetteville.
For three years, she worked as a teacher in Baltimore with The New Teacher Project, which helps train people from non-education backgrounds as instructors. She had studied chemistry and sociology at Georgia State University.
Six months ago she returned to Atlanta, working as a contractor for the same non-profit. She’s been job-hunting ever since, hoping for a permanent position with health care and other benefits.
“I’ve had a phone interview, but it was a part-time position,” she said. She’s waiting to interview with two other potential employers that called her about full-time jobs.
“I’ll just have to see,” she said.
— Michael E. Kanell contributed to this report.
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