Athens' unemployment rate was up slightly last month. The Georgia Department of Labor released the numbers Thursday. The rate was 4.5 percent in May, compared to 4.4. percent in April. Commissioner Mark Butler says the labor force, which consists of employed residents and those who are unemployed and actively looking for jobs, increased.
“Probably the largest factor that caused unemployment to go up is that we did see an uptick in initial claims for unemployment, these are individuals who may have been laid off, or temporarily laid off, that filed for unemployment,” according to Butler.
Butler says news surrounding the increase is not all bad.
“One of the factors that caused the unemployment rate to go up is actually a good thing, and that is we saw our labor force continue to get larger in the Athens area. That means individuals are encouraged by the job market and therefore they are coming…to look for work and that number increased in the month of May. And even better news is most of those individuals, not all, but most of those individuals, were actually able to find a job and gain employment.”
Metro Gainesville had the lowest area jobless rate at 3.9 percent, while the River Valley region had the highest at 6 percent. The Department of Labor encourages both Job seekers and employers are encouraged to use GDOL’s online job listing service, employga.com, to search for jobs or recruit new employees.