Nearly half a million more jobs needed to get Georgia back to even

The nation’s shrinking percentage of people who either have jobs or are seeking them highlights an issue that has dogged Georgia since early in the Great Recession.

Nearly half a million more Georgians would have to be employed to get the state back to its pre-recession ratio of employment-to-population, The Atlanta Journal Constitution recently reported, citing the Hamilton Project, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

At the rate that Georgia added jobs in the past year, it would take another six years to reach the employment-to-population ratio set before the recession, assuming no population growth in the interim. The state had 64.6 jobs for every 100 adults before the recession. That slipped to 57.4 during the recession and has since inched up to 58.2.