While the nation slowly recovers from the recession, the lingering effects of the construction bust are keeping metro Atlanta's unemployment rate high.
Out-of-work construction workers were one of the biggest contributors to the area's jobless rate of 10.4 percent in January, up from 10.1 percent in December, the state Labor Department reported Thursday.
Other factors included layoffs in manufacturing and in administrative and support services, the department said.
Nationally, unemployment stood at 9 percent in January and dipped to 8.9 percent in February -- its lowest mark in almost two years.
Ironically, the improving national picture may also contribute to Georgia's stubbornly above-average rate.
Roger Tutterow, an economist at Mercer University, said the drop in national unemployment could be prodding Georgians who had given up looking for work back into the job market, driving up the numbers here.
Lisa Carson of Doraville is not one of them. Carson, who has an associate degree in marketing and a bachelor's in business administration and management, has searched for a new job for a little more than three years. She's found short-term employment at temp agencies, but a full-time job has remained elusive.
"I've pretty much lost everything," she said. "I search at least two hours a day, but I've just continued to run into dead ends."
In any case, metro Atlanta's upward movement tracked the statewide increase, also to 10.4 percent, which was released last week. That tied a record since unemployment rates have been measured.
Labor Commissioner Mark Butler noted that the recession hit just as metro Atlanta and Georgia were in one of the state's biggest growth cycles, led by flourishing residential, commercial and industrial real estate development. When the economy hit the wall, the over-leveraged construction industry collapsed.
"Our recovery is going to lag behind the rest of the nation," Butler said.
Tutterow noted that Dalton, at 13 percent jobless, posted the worst January unemployment numbers among Georgia metro areas. The northwest Georgia city is a hub of carpet and flooring manufacturers, also heavily dependent on homebuilding and commercial construction.
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