The metro Atlanta job market was better thanTampa’s, so Kalinda Campbell came here. But things changed again and now she’s in Houston.
“I see a lot of people moving away from Atlanta, people who have live there a long time,” she said.
A Tampa native, she had shuttled back and forth between her home town and Atlanta before getting a full-time job here in human resources. “There was more opportunity back then in Atlanta. And I loved Atlanta. I was there 12 years on and off.”
Then she was laid off.
Campbell, now 31, was able to land a series of contract jobs, but her last one ran out in August 2011.
“I left Atlanta because I couldn’t find a job,” she said. “And I got two or three job offers in Houston within two weeks of posting my resume.”
Her experience reflects a statistical flipflop between two Sunbelt regions.
In mid-2003, Houston’s jobless rate was 6.9 percent while Atlanta’s was 4.8 percent. Last month, unemployment in metro Houston was 5.9 percent, vs. 7.6 percent here.
“As much as I loved Atlanta,” she said, “I decided to leave because I got more money and there’s a lower cost of living here.”
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