Metro Atlanta’s unemployment rate dropped to 9.8 percent in March, offering further evidence that the economy is climbing, in fits and starts, from its recessionary trough.
The March rate fell from 10.2 percent in February, the Georgia Department of Labor reported Tuesday. The slide bolstered a wary optimism shared by many Atlanta job seekers who hadn’t seen such a substantial change in 12 months.
Their glass-half-full sentiments were underscored by mostly favorable earnings reports this week from some of Atlanta’s corporate stalwarts. Coca-Cola, UPS and farm equipment maker AGCO announced robust financial results Tuesday -- though none made any hiring announcements.
Metro Atlanta, with 260,270 unemployed across the 28-county region, needs all the job help it can get. Among the nation's 12 biggest metro areas, only Atlanta posted a net decrease in jobs between February 2010 and February 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Add the battered housing market – the S&P/Case-Shiller Index reported Tuesday another significant drop in home prices – to rising gas and food prices and any happy-days talk sounds premature.
“Everybody still needs to be somewhat cautious as far as what the future holds. We’ve still got a lot of outside issues – rising gas prices, unrest in the Middle East – to deal with,” said Mark Butler, the state’s labor commissioner. “The jobs report is a good sign, but I want to stress we’re a long way from popping champagne.”
A taste of hard cider, though, might be in order. Atlanta added 8,600 new jobs in March, mostly in the leisure, hospitality, health care and temp-work industries.
Hotels and restaurants, anticipating the spring and summer holiday seasons, added jobs. Hiring at temporary employment agencies, usually a precursor of full-time hiring, rose. Jobs for computer system designers and wireless telecomm techies shot up 11.4 and 7.1 percent, respectively, since March 2010, according to the labor department.
The March jobless rate is the lowest since May 2010.
But jobless rates bounce with the season, the overall economy and the whims of employers. Last March, for example, Atlanta’s unemployment rate stood at 10.1 percent. Since then, the rate has yo-yoed between 9.7 and 10.4 percent.
While the latest drop is encouraging, there are fewer payroll jobs available across Atlanta this March (2,651,000) than there were a year ago (2,670,000). Fewer jobs deflates the unemployment rate.
Tommy Barge, laid off by Delta in May 2010, takes a measured approach to the latest figures. The IT specialist from Palmetto has seen promising computer and logistical job leads wither away, yet he remains calm, determined, upbeat.
“People get all excited about the unemployment rate (drop), and it seems like a lot, but what’s the national average?” Barge, 53, said Tuesday. “We’ve still got a ways to go.”
Georgia’s unemployment rate has been higher than the national average, now 8.8 percent, for 42 consecutive months. The state, and metro Atlanta especially, was hit harder than the country by the Great Recession that started in December 2007 and technically ended in June 2009.
Atlanta’s housing industry remains moribund. Home prices across the city dropped 5.8 percent from February 2010 to February 2011, according to the Case-Shiller Index released Tuesday.
“Atlanta, Cleveland and Las Vegas join Detroit as cities with home prices below their 2000 levels,” said David Blitzer with S&P Indices.
And Atlanta’s employment picture, when compared to the nation’s dozen largest metropolitan areas, has grown darker over the last year too. The region lost 4,900 non-farm jobs, or .2 percent of all jobs. No other city lost jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Washington gained 39,400 jobs. Detroit added 22,600 jobs.
“Atlanta’s economy was over-exposed to residential and commercial construction and there was also a loss of spillover work for attorneys, real estate agents and others,” said Roger Tutterow, an economist at Mercer University. “And Georgia has seen a lot of bank failures that has no doubt impacted employment in the financial services sector, certainly here in Atlanta.”
If this post-recession economy plays to form, then Atlantans should find more jobs as the year progresses. Corporations, flush with cash, typically expand production and hire as markets here and abroad rebound.
Reginald Laurent of Fairburn, unemployed since January 2010, doesn’t share the nascent optimism that jobs are just around the corner. Resumes go unanswered. Gas prices rise. And college grads will soon flood the job market.
“I’m a humble man. If I find a job that pays me $35,000 I’ll take it,” said Laurent, 50, a former mortgage broker. “I’ve never failed at anything, but I never thought it would take this long to get a job. I’m not un-intelligent, just unemployed. I just want to feel normal again.”
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