Georgia's Jobless Rate Dropped Below 7 Percent in December

By Scott Bernarde

• Local unemployment rates for December, including Cumming and Forsyth County, will be released on Jan. 29, according to the Georgia Department of Labor

The unemployment rate in Georgia dipped below 7 percent in December for the first time in eight months, the state labor department said Thursday.

Georgia’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell to 6.9 last month, a three-tenths of percentage point drop from November’s rate of 7.2 percent, according to a news release. The rate in December 2013 was 7.4 percent.

“We ended the year with our rate dropping below seven percent for the first time since last April,” State Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said in the news release. “And, this was the first time in eight years that we’ve had job growth in December.”

Holiday hiring boosted Georgia’s job total to 4,196,400, the highest level since 4,202,100 at the beginning of the recession in December 2007. Retail trade, warehousing and transportation, industries associated with holiday hiring, accounted for virtually all of the job growth.

“I’m especially pleased that we had very strong 2.7 percent over-the year job growth, which gave us our largest December-to-December growth since 1999,” Butler said. “And, when we look at the various sectors, we had four that grew by more than three percent – professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, construction, and trade and transportation.”

Georgia has added 108,200 jobs since December of 2013, with private industry accounting for 98.5 percent of the growth, the labor department said.

There were 57,510 new claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed in December. Of that number, 27,868, or 48.5 percent, were temporary claims filed mostly in textile manufacturing and construction due to seasonal layoffs. Overall, new claims, including seasonal and other layoffs, were up by 102 percent from 28,465 in November. However, they were down by 12.7 percent from 65,889 in December of 2013.