Metro Atlanta’s job market continued its long, slow trek back toward health last month as the unemployment rate ticked down to 6.1 percent.
Layoffs are down and employers have been hiring rapidly enough to cut the rate, which was 6.2 percent in January, even though the number of people looking for work is rising, according to figures released Thursday by the Georgia Labor Department.
More jobs have been added during the past 12 months than during any 12-month period since June 1999.
The number of jobs in metro Atlanta grew by 110,900 in the past year, a robust 4.6 percent rate, said state Labor Commissioner Mark Butler.
“That is where the really good news is for the Atlanta area.”
In the 12 months before June 1999, metro Atlanta added 111,600 jobs – a 5.2 percent pace.
The metro jobless rate remains higher than at any time from the early 1990s until the 2007-09 recession. The current level would once have been considered recession-level joblessness.
But the rate has fallen a long way since cresting at 10.7 percent in 2010 and 2011. A year ago, it was 7.1 percent.
The recovery in metro Atlanta and Georgia has been slower than nationally, with the unemployment rate consistently higher here. The nation overall has added more than 3 million jobs in the past year. The U.S. jobless rate in February was 5.5 percent.
Of late the region has shown signs of catching up. Last month it added 12,000 jobs – more than in the same month in recent years, Butler said.
Both the hiring pickup and the still-large pool of jobseekers were in evidence Wednesday at a Cherokee County job fair where 29 employers offered 600 jobs, according to Misti Martin, president of the Cherokee Office of Economic Development, co-sponsor with the Department of Labor.
The event at the Northside Hospital-Cherokee Conference Center drew 905 jobseekers — so many that their vehicles filled the parking lot and forced many to circle, wait or, in some cases, give up and drive away.
About 200 jobless area residents were “pre-screened” to see if they were potential matches for the jobs being offered. They got in early.
The rest of the crowd was not necessarily made up of unemployed people, Martin said, since hiring may let some local residents find work closer to home, she said.
“Seventy-nine percent of our residents commute outside of the community to work. If you are driving an hour to a job and an hour back, that’s two hours you can’t spend with your family.”
Pat King was looking for a clerical job. The Canton woman has worked for a temp agency, but she wants something steady.
“I’d really like to be working for a financial company,” said King, 33.
A dismal job market discourages job-seekers. Some go back to – or stay in – school. Some become stay-at-home parents or retire. And people who dislike their jobs count their blessings, bite their tongues and stay put.
As the job market heats up, the process works in reverse.
For example, one young woman waiting in the middle of a long line at the job fair declined to give her name. She wanted to speak about the job options at Northside, but she was on her lunch break from work and she didn’t want her employer, a retailer, to know she was job-hunting.
She is fed up with the way she has been treated at her current job. Her schedule changes frequently, often requiring her to be in the store late into the evening and then again early in the morning.
“I do not want another job in retail,” she said.
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