Georgia’s jobless rate slipped to 7.7 percent in October from 7.9 percent in September as the economy added 33,800 jobs, the state Labor Department announced Thursday.
Although new jobless claims rose during the month, that increase could be pegged to temporary cuts at some factories and offices, Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said. Overall, he said, the picture is brightening.
“Georgia employers have added 96,000 jobs since October of last year,” Butler said. “We had significant over-the-year growth in almost -every sector, which shows the overall strength in our job recovery.”
He said the October growth boosted the state’s job total to 4.17 million, the most since 2008. Yet that is still about 180,000 fewer than before the recession, and the state’s jobless rate has been among the highest in the nation for much of this year. An updated state ranking is due out Friday.
One sign of a healthier job market is a pickup in “churn” – the willingness of people to leave one job for another.
Shelly Manuel, 36, of Smyrna left a job she liked to take one that she intensely wanted – running fundraising for her alma mater, the Walker School in Marietta. Since getting there, she has hired someone to help with the office database.
Budget permitting, she expects to hire more during the coming year. “Looking at a stack of resumes, if you can find one with the right experience, I am all over it.”
Economists say such movement is a feature of a dynamic economy that is creating new opportunities.
By any measure, the job market has improved since the recession sent the unemployment rate to a high of 10.4 percent. New claims for unemployment insurance — which parallel layoffs — were up 9 percent in October from the prior month, but they were still 18 percent below levels of a year ago and less than half what they were coming out of the recession.
For those who lose jobs now, hope comes from the companies that are expanding — many tied to technology.
Arizona-based DeskHub, for example, “is looking now, sort of quietly,” for employees to staff its new offices in Atlanta, said CEO Jay Chernikoff. The company, which sets up shared space for small companies, is hiring people with a mix of qualities, he said.
“It’s more about a person than the specifics of experience. We are more looking for people with a wealth of experience who can react on their feet. Could be someone who was in sales, could be someone who was a psychologist.”
The intersection of digital media and marketing is a good place to be, said Puneet Mehta, co-founder of Atlanta-based Local Marketing Inc., which has grown to more than 20 full-time employees – and plans to open branches in other cities
“This week we hired two people – so far,” he said. “Next year is about hiring and growing. And we are mostly hiring from other companies.”
Technology is also adding old types of jobs that can be done in new ways. For instance, the job of an executive assistant can now be done from a distance, and the work-week of one assistant spread to several companies, said Kenzie Biggins, CEO and founder of Atlanta-based Uniquely Virtual.
The business has seven employees, five of them working as “virtual executive assistants,” she said. “And we are growing. Over the next six months I expect to be adding about eight people.”
Some recent hires had been employees were out of the job market entirely before they came to Uniquely Virtual.
That needs to happen more for the job market to heal. Many older workers who lost jobs during the recession have not worked since. Meanwhile, many younger people have yet to find steady work.
In October, there were 139,400 long-term unemployed workers, 38 percent of the total who are out of work. That is dramatically down from a few years ago when long-term unemployed were more than 55 percent of all job-seekers.
It is still much higher than in any time before the painful recession of 2007-09.
Economists say those figures are signs of progress, but also evidence that growth has not been robust enough to produce full recovery.
About the Author
