After several consecutive months of posting rising unemployment rates in the beleaguered state, Georgia finally has some good news for the Peach State’s marketplace.
Georgia’s jobless rate fell to 7.9 percent in September as employers laid off fewer workers, the state labor department reported Thursday, the Georgia Department of Labor reports.
That is a two-tenths drop from the 8.1 unemployment rate in August.
Georgia remains one of the states with the highest jobless rates in the nation. September’s jobless rate has dropped only one-tenth of a percentage point from a year ago and is two percentage points higher than the 5.9 percent U.S. unemployment rate.
“The rate dropped because there were 5,744 fewer unemployed people in September, according to the federal government’s monthly household survey, and we had fewer new layoffs,” state Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said in a statement.
While the unemployment rate fell, Georgia lost 7,300 jobs in September, with the total number falling to 4,129,200.
The net loss was mostly seasonal in nature, the labor department said. The biggest decline was the loss of 9,200 jobs in leisure and hospitality, as many students left summer jobs to return to school. Additional losses came in several other sectors.
Despite the overall loss, government gained 8,200 jobs in September, which were mostly in public schools.
During the past year, Georgia added about 80,000 new jobs.
“The growth is in every private sector job category we track, with government being the only sector showing a loss,” Butler said.
On the layoff front, there were 30,199 new claims for unemployment insurance in September, a decline of 3 percent from August.
Over the past year, initial unemployment claims fell by 11.9 percent.
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