A year of solid, though slower, job growth ended with Georgia’s unemployment rate ticking down from 5.6 percent to 5.5 percent in December.
Job growth was just 3,300 in the month, the state labor department said, and 91,100 jobs during the year – down sharply from 2014 and slightly from 2013.
Much recent hiring has been in the corporate sector and in construction, but a range of sectors showed growth last year, reflecting a broad-based expansion.
Atlanta-based Construction Resources, which makes countertops, garage doors, fireplaces and other appliances, has been hiring people with a range of skills, said Mitch Hires, company CEO.
“People with technical skills are very important for us,” said Hires, whose company employs about 800 people.
That means people who program and operate machinery, but who also have “estimation skills” — the ability to assess and analyze a project and accurately predict its cost and duration, Hires said.
Moreover, technology like programming and computer-aided design, is now essential to the business, Hires said. “We are continually searching for IT people.”
Georgia’s jobless rate has improved from 6.6 percent a year ago. It has been steady or dropping every month since May.
“I think you have to look at this optimistically,” said Adam Coker, managing director and the market investment executive for US Trust in Atlanta. “That 5.5 percent is pretty good. I think we can say we are getting toward full employment.”
Still, the economy has been slow to make up all the ground lost in the 2007-09 recession. More than 200,000 people are still officially unemployed, which means they are out of work and actively searching for a job.
And while the number of jobs has surpassed the pre-recession peak, the number of people employed is still below the peak. That is likely because many people are working more than one job to make ends meet.
Also troubling is the number of people who left the workforce entirely and are still on the sidelines. In a strong economy, the share of people in the workforce typically rises, but that portion is far lower now than before the 2007-09 recession.
Much of the drop may be due to retiring baby boomers, Coker said. “But I think that the long and gradual recovery from recession has certainly frustrated some workers who have just given up looking for a job.”
Georgia’s unemployment rate has also been above the national average, currently 5.0 percent, since October 2007.
Some important sectors have been weak. Financial services lost jobs during December and were barely up for the year. The category that includes restaurants also shrunk last month and inched up for the year.
The pace of hiring might pick up except for many companies’ caution about borrowing, said Samantha McElhaney, vice president at Fifth Third Bank. “We have seen clients and prospects being very conservative in their approach to growth.”
But many numbers look good. Layoffs — measured by new claims for jobless insurance — rose from November but were down 16.7 percent from a year earlier.
The labor force is still 200,000 shy of the labor force peak in 2008, but some people are coming off the sidelines: During December, the state’s labor force increased by 14,000.
“People are getting more optimistic,” said independent economist Michael Wald of Atlanta, formerly of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “They are out there either getting jobs or looking for jobs.”
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