The Georgia Department of Labor (GDOL) announced early Thursday morning that the state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in June dropped to 5.1 percent, down two-tenths of a percentage point from 5.3 percent in May. The rate was 5.8 percent in June 2015.
“We haven’t seen unemployment this low in Georgia since the beginning of the Great Recession in December 2007,” said State Labor Commissioner Mark Butler. “In June, our employers created 11,400 jobs, hired more people and laid off fewer workers. In addition, our labor force continues to grow.”
The total number of jobs increased to 4,387,600. The growth was primarily in leisure and hospitality, 5,300; professional and business services, 4,900; education and health services, 2,100; manufacturing, 1,700; and government, 1,300. However, these job gains were offset somewhat by the loss of 3,000 jobs in the service industry.
“Over the year, we’ve added 123,200 jobs, which represents a robust 2.9 percent growth rate,” said Butler. “We continue to outpace the national 1.7 percent growth rate. When we look at the individual job sectors, construction jobs grew by 7.3 percent, making it our fastest growing job sector.”
The sectors in Georgia showing the largest numerical increases were professional and business services, 34,200; leisure and hospitality, 23,100; trade, transportation and warehousing, 21,900; education and health services and construction, 12,200 each; manufacturing, 7,600; government, 6,900; and financial activities, 5,500. Information services, which lost 900 jobs, was the only major sector to record a loss.
The number of initial claims for unemployment insurance, a measure of new layoffs, fell by 10 percent to 27,295, with about one-quarter of those being temporary claims. Most of the decrease was due to a decline in claims filed in manufacturing. Over the year, the number of claims fell by 5,324, or 16.3 percent, from 32,619 filed in June 2015. The decreases came in a number of industries, including health care and social assistance, construction, administrative and support services, and accommodations and food services, along with trade, transportation and warehousing.
The number of employed residents in Georgia rose by 18,317 to 4,620,466, while the number of unemployed residents fell by 5,581 to 249,683, its lowest level since November 2007, near the beginning of the recession. The labor force grew by 12,736 to 4,870,149 in June. It has grown by 85,726 since the beginning of this year.
Butler encourages job seekers and employers to use the GDOL’s online job listing service, www.employgeorgia.com to search for jobs or recruit new employees. In June, 64,944 jobs throughout the state were posted on Employ Georgia. The leading sectors for job postings were health care and social assistance, transportation and warehousing, retail trade, professional, scientific and technical services, along with finance and insurance.
