Area economists struck a hopeful tone about metro Atlanta’s outlook, despite a slight bump in local unemployment numbers.
The area’s unemployment rate rose slightly from September to October, from 7.4 percent to 7.7 percent, but is down more significantly from October 2012, when the rate was 8.5 percent, according to data released Thursday by the Georgia Department of Labor.
“The trend is improving on employment each year,” said Emily Sanders, managing director of the Atlanta office of United Capital, an investment advisory firm. “The big job gainers were primarily in professional and business services, trade and transportation, education and health care. It did decline slightly from September to October but that was really very slightly.”
Metro Atlanta’s economy is affected in part by factors over which it has no control, noted Rajeev Dhawan, director of the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University.
“In the past eight or nine months the job growth in Atlanta has been outpacing the nation. That’s the good news,” he said. “The bad news is the factors that stop the train from getting in the next gear: political dysfunction in Washington and global malaise.”
He prefers to consider broader economic trendlines to monthly updates, saying the shorter-term numbers can be “statistical noise.”
“If it had gone up from a year ago, that’s a big movement year over year,” he said. “I like to take a bigger picture.”
Overall, Georgia’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for October was 8.1 percent, down from 8.3 percent in September, according to the labor department. That rate was 8.8 percent in October 2012.
Metro Athens had Georgia’s lowest area jobless rate, at 5.8 percent. The Heart of Georgia-Altamaha region in rural south Georgia had the highest, at 10.9 percent.
Data also indicate disparities within metro Atlanta. Cobb, Cherokee and Gwinnett counties’ rates were 7.0, 6.3 and 6.9, respectively, while Fulton, Clayton and DeKalb counties’ rates were 8.4, 10.0 and 8.5 respectively.
Roger C. Tutterow, professor of economics at Mercer University’s Stetson School of Business, prefers taking a longer-term view of economic data.
“It’s important to look year-over-year rather than month-over-month,” he said. “You can get some volatility just because of typical seasonal factors. (Rates of) 8.5 a year ago to 7.7 now - that’s a good trend. It continues to reflect an economy that’s adding jobs. We’re continuing to improve.”
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