State Jobless Rate Rises Again -- to 8.1 Percent

Georgia’s unemployment rate rose again in August, and was just one-tenth of a percentage point shy of the rate from a year ago.

The Georgia Department of Labor announced Thursday that the August rate jobless rate was 8.1 percent, up from July’s rate of 7.7. The rate was 8.2 in August, 2013.

Georgia’s labor commissioner said the news sends a confusing message.

“We had good job growth, both over the month with 24,700 new jobs and over the year with 79,300 more jobs, and initial claims, a leading economic indicator that measures new layoffs, decreased 27 percent,” Mark Butler said in a press release. “All of this positive data makes the rate increase somewhat questionable.

“With continued job growth and fewer layoffs, we would expect the rate to come down. We’ve talked with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, which conducts the monthly household survey that determines the national and state unemployment rates,” Butler continued. “They say the ‘volatility’ in the monthly survey numbers ‘is expected’ and that it’s often ‘smoothed’ during the annual benchmarking process. Last year’s initial August rate was eventually reduced by a half-point, and we expect a similar reduction this year.”

The Labor Department said there were 4,132,900 jobs in Georgia in August, the most since June 2008, and an increase of 0.6 percent from 4,108,200 in July. More than 16,000 seasonal school workers returned to their jobs in August.

“Our over-the-year job growth, which was an impressive 2.0 percent, was the second largest for August since 2005 and came in all the important job sectors,” Butler said.

There were 31,122 new claims for unemployment insurance filed in August, a decrease of 11,536, from 42,658 in July. Also, over the year, initial claims were down by 12.3 percent.