Georgia added a modest 1,500 jobs last month, but the unemployment rate stayed steady at a relatively low 3.6% for the third consecutive month, state officials said Thursday.
While the state has added 64,900 jobs during the past 12 months, the growth has been choppy, with strong hiring in health care and social assistance, hospitality and government, but losses in office work, the film industry and logistics, according to the Georgia Department of Labor.
“While job growth has slowed nationwide, Georgia continues to drive job creation,” said Bruce Thompson, the state’s labor commissioner.
Much of the expansion was in hospitality, where jobs are not typically high in pay. Also gaining was health care, which includes the high pay of doctors, the moderate pay of nurses and technicians and lower paying positions like aides to the elderly.
While October might not have been a month of robust hiring, it was another marker in an expansion that has defied last year’s consensus predictions of a recession. In the face of high interest rates, growth has slowed but continued.
The unemployment rate is up from the record lows set in 2022, but is only slightly higher than the lowest, pre-pandemic rate.
The jobless rate includes only those who are actively seeking work. That number edged up in October to 196,202, officials said. That is the highest level since July 2021.
Also up was the number of new claims for unemployment insurance. A spike in that measure would typically come from large layoffs and warn of a serious downturn in the labor market — that is, recession.
However, the claims number in October was still below 29,000 for the month.
Georgia ranks 31st among the states for the share of workers who have filed for unemployment insurance, according to a calculation by WalletHub, an online financial site. Alaska is first, meaning worst.
Moreover, the jobless rate held steady despite an increase in the labor force, which has grown by nearly 89,000 workers in the past 12 months. That is a sign that most of those looking for work last month were able to find it.
Georgia’s labor force — which includes those working and those in a job search — has grown to more than 5.4 million people.
Even so, a significantly smaller share of the population is working than in past decades: That share, known as the labor force participation rate, was 61.7%, according to the Department of Labor. The rate reached a peak of more than 69% late in the economic boom of the 1990s. If the same proportion of the population were working now, the workforce would be larger by hundreds of thousands.
Economists say the decline is a combination of factors, much of it driven by the shift of Boomers out of the workforce.
Job announcements have continued: GreenBox Systems, which provides automated warehouse services, will create more than 300 jobs at a distribution facility in Butts County, according to the office of Gov. Brian Kemp.
NEMA, a Gwinnett-based logistics and supply chain management company, expanded its facility, adding 20 jobs, according to county officials.
Georgia jobs in October
Best, pre-pandemic: 25,100 (2004)
Worst, pre-pandemic: -23,200 (2008)
Average, pre-pandemic: 4,200
Recent: 1,500 (2024)
Georgia unemployment rate in October
Best, pre-pandemic: 3.4% (2000)
Best, all-time: 3.3% (2022)
Worst, pre-pandemic: 10.9% (2009)
Average, pre-pandemic: 6.0%
Recent: 3.6% (2024)
Sources: Georgia Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics
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