Alpharetta Jobless Rate Rises To 6 Percent

While the jobless rate for the city of Milton did not move in June, the same can’t be said for its neighbor, Alpharetta.

Alpharetta’s jobless rate nudged higher from 5.9 percent in May to 6 percent last month. On the positive side, the city’s rate is still lower than its June 2013 rate of 6.4 percent.

Milton — the smaller of the two cities — saw no change in its unemployment rate last month. The rate hovered at 6.2 percent, which was the same rate recorded in May. The city’s jobless rate in June 2013 was 7.2 percent.

The unemployment also rose for the second straight month in metro Atlanta, rising four-tenths of a point last month.

The June jobless rate was 7.6 percent, up from 7.2 in May. The metro rate in April was 6.5. The rate in June 2013 was 8.6 percent.

Seasonal factors accounted for much of the increase — summer job loss by non-contract school workers, temporary layoffs in manufacturing and an increased job force with the addition of graduates and students entering the job market.

The number of jobs in metro Atlanta fell 4,000 month-to-month to 2,460,900 in June, the labor department said, but that was still a 2.4 percent increase since June 2013.

Additionally, there was a 13.4 percent increase in new claims forunemployment insurance from May to June.

Metro Athens had the lowest area jobless rate in Georgia at 6.3 percent, while the Heart of Georgia-Altamaha region had the highest rate at 10.4 percent.

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