Georgia Unemployment Rate Drops

Georgia’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in June was 6.1 percent, down from 6.3 percent in May.
State Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said the rate has dropped to its lowest level in years.
“We saw the unemployment rate in June go down to 6.1 percent, which, by the way, is the lowest we have see our unemployment rate in Georgia in seven years. It mainly had to do with the fact that we saw fewer people be unemployed last month. Georgia created about 2,300 jobs last month. Even though that is below our average for that time period historically, when you take a look at that over the year job growth, we still have 106,000 more jobs than we did at this time last year.”

Butler said the gains in jobs came in government, mostly at the local level, trade, transportation and warehousing, manufacturing, education and health services.
However, those gains were somewhat offset by losses in leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, information services and construction.
Over the past year, Butler said Georgia has created 106,000 jobs since June of last year, outpacing the rest of the country.
“Georgia is still outpacing the nation when it comes to job growth. We still have a much higher percentage of growth than is on average for the nation. So, we are looking very good when it comes to job growth. We are continuing to see Georgia’s employers add jobs, and we know this because when we take a look at our new system, employgeorgia.com, we saw just last week 11,000 jobs added just here recently.”
Meantime, the number of initial claims for unemployment insurance rose by 16.7 percent, to 32,619 in June.
Butler said however, most of the increase was due to the filing of temporary claims.
“Well we did see initial claims edge up last month about 16 percent. However, over the year we are seeing a decrease of over 14 percent in initial claims. Which means that we are seeing fewer people being laid off.”
Over the year, claims were 14 percent, claims filed in June 2014.
Local unemployment numbers come out next week