Thursday’s unemployment report might have been better if Howard Kelman, Monica John and thousands of other metro Atlantans stayed on their couches and continued wondering they'd ever work again.
But, they decided recently that the time was right to re-enter the job-search world. Amid signs of new hiring they doffed pajamas, sharpened resumes and braved fresh rounds of exhilaration and rejection.
Metro Atlanta’s unemployment rate dipped to 10.2 percent in February, down from 10.4 the month before and 10.7 percent in February 2010. It was a slight drop, but evidence nonetheless that some jobless Georgians have started to find work. The 28-county metro Atlanta region created 16,400 new jobs in February.
That's also drawing people like Kelman, who quit looking for work in January after a “very promising” job prospect didn’t pan out, back into the game. He started looking again in February. Help wanted ads targeted at office furniture salesmen like Kelman appeared with greater frequency.
“I’m cautiously optimistic. I anticipate having a job within the next three months,” said Kelman, of Marietta. “I just have a feeling that everything I’m doing will pay off.”
Gauging the number of re-energized job seekers is difficult. Neither the state nor federal labor departments track them. But there are signs that the pool of newly determined jobless Americans is spreading.
The official unemployment rate counts men and women without jobs as a percentage of the entire civilian labor force, whose size is based partly on monthly surveys of people either employed or looking for work. So when discouraged workers return to the market, they add to the labor force and have the ironic effect of holding jobless rates higher.
Nationwide, the jobless rate stands at 8.9 percent. Georgia's rate -- also 10.2 percent in February -- has been higher than the nation's for 41 straight months.
Another federal designation – “discouraged workers” – tallies the nation’s unemployed and the jobless who’ve not looked for work the past month.
Last year, the nation’s official unemployment and “discouraged worker” rate was 10.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Georgia, it was 11.5 percent – 7th highest in the nation.
Few of Georgia’s jobless were as discouraged as Monica John, the Roswell woman laid off from her industrial tool sales job in January 2009. Unemployment led to food stamps, a depleted 401(k), stopped mortgage payments and doctor visits to Grady hospital. After dozens of unrequited on-line applications, John stopped looking for jobs from July to December 2010.
“It wasn’t working and I thought I’d end up at Walmart as a greeter,” said John, her eyes welling. “I just felt so downtrodden like you’re never going to get back to work again.”
Georgia has lost a half million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, but things may have bottomed out. More than 25,000 jobs were created statewide in January, triggering the first dip in the state's unemployment rate in nearly a year. The private sector – the engine for job growth and economic optimism – provided most of the new jobs.
John, like Kelman, attends job-search workshops at Roswell United Methodist Church. Roughly 185 men and women gathered Monday in the church’s dining room for pasta, prayer and professional networking tips. Last year, at least 275 people attended each event, said Jay Litton, who helps run the twice-monthly gatherings.
“People are hiring and our attendance reflects that,” he said. “For us to be down 33 percent this year is like a light switch has been turned on. It tells me the job situation is improving.”
Heidi Shierholz, with the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, isn’t convinced. While 1.3 million jobs have been created over the last year nationwide, the so-called labor force participation rate remains stubbornly low. The rate measures the ratio of working-age people to those who are employed or unemployed but looking for work.
In 2007, before the recession, the rate stood at a healthy 67.7 percent, about the modern historical norm. Last year it dropped to 63.5 percent – the lowest level since 1976 when rates were first tabulated.
“We don’t know when the rate will increase, but when that happens it will contribute to keeping the unemployment rate high,” Shierholz said. “And for older workers, the 55-plus crowd, the rate has increased over the Great Recession because they’ve taken a massive hit to their retirement security. So they’re less likely to retire.”
John, 60, and Kelman, 59, want back in the game.
“Would I have thought five years ago that I would lose everything? That I would be sixty and financially flat-lined? No,” said John, hoping to find a job in the insurance industry, a previous profession. “So, I need to work.”
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