State Unemployment Numbers Rise Slightly in June

Georgia’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 8.6 percent in June.

That’s up from 8.3 percent in May, but it was down from 9.1 percent in June a year ago.

“The rate increased primarily because of two factors that occur this time of year,” said State Labor Commissioner Mark Butler. “A large number of education workers are unemployed during the summer and new graduates are considered unemployed until they find a job.”

The seasonal impact on the unemployment rate was compounded because Georgia lost 600 jobs and the number of people in the labor force declined by 1,341.

“There is a silver lining in this new data because this was the best May-to-June job performance we’ve had since 2002, ” Butler continued. “And, if you factor out the loss of 10,000 government jobs and just look at the private sector, we would have actually gained 9,400 jobs last month because our private sector employers continue to hire.”

Butler said most of the expected job losses in the coming months will continue to be in the government sector.  However, some industries added workers.

Those increases came in professional and business services, 8,000; leisure and hospitality, 4,000; construction and financial services, 1,700 each; and manufacturing and other services, 1,200 each.

Local unemployment numbers for June will come out next week.