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Georgia Unemployment Numbers Rebound After Losses from Hurricane Irma

The State Labor Department says Georgia broke the 4.5 million jobs barrier in October, bouncing back from a job loss of 3,400 due to Hurricane Irma in September. The department released the numbers this week. Commissioner Mark Butler tells us what that means for the state.

“Well, first of all it means that Georgia’s economy is continuing to grow,” Butler said. “We have seen jobs grow over the year, we’re probably not going to have as many jobs as the end of this year as we have the previous two years, but that’s pretty normal. In the past we were back-filling a lot of jobs that we had lost during the recession, but right now we’re on pace to have as many as 90-95,000 jobs for this year.  

While the state’s unemployment rate is higher than the nation’s, Butler says the numbers are actually stronger in Georgia.

“If you take a look at the reasons why the unemployment rate went down nationally on average, we saw almost 800,000 people drop out of the workforce and about a half a million fewer people actually working. That was a big factor in causing the unemployment rate to go down nationally.”

He said that was not the case in Georgia.

“We didn’t see that in Georgia, in Georgia we added 15,000 to our workforce and actually had over 20,000 people actually gain employment over the month.

Credit Department of Labor
State Labor Commissioner Mark Butler

Georgia also set records in October for labor force and the number of employed residents. Butler says the state compares favorably to the nation.

The unemployment rate in October was 4.3 percent, down from September’s revised number of 4.4 percent. That compares favorably to last October when the rate was 5.4 percent. The lowest jobless rate ever recorded for the state was 3.4 percent in November 2000.

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