The Georgia unemployment rate dropped last month to 7.7 percent, its lowest point in five years, as the economy added jobs across a range of sectors and layoffs slowed to pre-recession levels.
Unemployment is still historically high and long-term joblessness is still a virtual epidemic, but the lower jobless rate reflects vast improvement from the double-digit unemployment of several years ago.
It also fuels hope that hiring will pick up through the new year.
“This confirms that the economic recovery is in place,” said Jeffrey Humphreys, director of the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia. “This is very good, solid news.”
The state’s economy added 19,500 jobs in November and 91,200 in the past year, according to Mark Butler, state labor commissioner. “The growth came in several industries, which indicates a broad job market recovery.”
The job search is not easy, but more employers are willing to hire, said Steve Hines, a Buckhead-based career counselor and author of Atlanta Jobs.
“The market has definitely picked up this year,” he said. “There are just more openings than three or four years ago.”
Despite that growth, in the four-and-a-half years since the recession officially ended, the state has replaced only 65 percent of the jobs that were lost. And the job seekers with the best odds are the ones who already have work.
“It you are out of work six months or longer, that is an issue,” Hines said. “Companies do like to hire people who are currently employed.”
That is an obstacle facing Erica Parks of Atlanta.
An eight-year Army veteran who served in Afghanistan, Parks hasn’t had a full-time job since the spring of 2011. She went back to school for a degree in public health, working part-time as a teaching assistant, and has slogged through a frustrating job search.
“I have been counting – I have made almost 300 job submissions,” said Parks, 35. “And I have had a lot of interviews.”
She does have a part-time position on commission with a big insurance company, so she gets some income when she sells their financial products. But her savings are pretty much exhausted and her home has been foreclosed on, although the bank hasn’t yet moved to evict her. “There is a ripple effect – if you are unemployed, so many things happen to you.”
About 365,055 workers in Georgia are officially unemployed – down 14 percent from a year ago. That doesn’t count anyone who has given up looking for work, gone back to school, retired prematurely or have become self-employed.
Among the unemployed, nearly half have been searching for more than six months.
“I’ve seen ads that say, if you are not working, we are not interested,” said Mike Century, 53, of Sandy Springs. “I am not getting much response from recruiters.”
A business and financial analyst with degrees in math and statistics and an MBA, he has been out of work more than a year. “When you start seeing the seasons for the second time, that’s when you really feel it.”
The rosier economy has not brightened all the corners of the job market. A few months without pay can turn a middle class professional life into one flirting with poverty – with full-time work searching for another job.
Roger Elam of Sandy Springs was laid off last winter from his job in administrative training support for a large financial firm. He said he spends upward of 55 hours each week making job-related phone calls, doing research, working on his resume and filing applications.
“This is more weeks than I have ever had on unemployment. If the economy was any better, I’d be disappointed with myself for not having a job.”
He rents a room in another man’s house.
The odds are tough too in the search for executive positions, said John Cash, a U.S. Air Force veteran and former banker.
Cash, who lives in Midtown Atlanta, has been in the job search since spring. He has a strategy: He focuses on networking and social media to make connections, he said. “Once I see something I might like, I go to LinkedIn or my other networks and try to get a ‘warm’ introduction.”
In an interview Thursday, Gov. Nathan Deal said government policies have helped spur growth.
“To be below the 8 percent mark is certainly a good sign and good news for our state,” he said. “And it comes at an appropriate time. That’s why our emphasis is on creating jobs.”
And while job growth is needed, it is not always enough. With employers able to pick among so many job seekers, many new jobs pay so little that the workers in them are still poor.
More than 60 percent of the poor are in families with at least one working person, said Trudi Renwick, chief of the poverty statistics branch of the Census Bureau.
And while the unemployment rate is a rough indication of the job market’s health, it can be misleading. Only people looking for work are counted as unemployed. So when many people get too discouraged to look, the rate may not reflect how bad things are.
“I think the unemployment rate may be harder to nudge down in 2014 because a lot of people will come back out to look for jobs,” Humphreys said.
Staff report Greg Bluestein contributed to this story.
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