The unemployment rate in Georgia - the highest of any state in September - declined by two tenths of a percentage point to 7.7 percent last month.
The Georgia Department of Labor said announced today that Georgia's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for October was 7.7 percent, down two-tenths of a percentage point from 7.9 percent in September. The rate in October of last year was 7.8 percent.
Nationwide, the jobless rate was 5.8 percent last month
"The rate fell as we had extremely strong job growth in October, which gave us the largest number of jobs in Georgia since May of 2008," Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said in a statement today. "Our state's private-sector employers get the credit because they created more than 91 percent of the new jobs in October and all of them since October of last year."
There were 4,166,400 jobs in October, an increase of 33,800, or eight-tenths of a percentage point, from 4,132,600 in September. The increase is 31 percent more jobs than the average September-to-October growth for the last three years.
The private sector created 30,800 of the new jobs, while state and local government education created the remainder. Job growth also came in trade, transportation and warehousing, 14,200; professional and business services, 7,900; education and health services, 4,900; construction, 1,200; leisure and hospitality, 1,100; information services, 1,000; and financial services, 500.
"Georgia employers have added 96,000 jobs since October of last year," said Butler. "We had significant over-the-year growth in almost every sector, which shows the overall strength in our job recovery. I'm especially encouraged that the number of construction jobs grew by nearly five percent to give us the most jobs in that industry in five years."