Georgia jobless rate drops to 8-year low, but still above U.S. average

Jobs and unemployment tile
Jobs and unemployment tile

Unemployment in Georgia fell last month to its lowest level in more than eight years as employers in the Peach State continued to add jobs at a faster pace than the U.S. as a whole.

The Georgia Department of Labor said today that the state's jobless rate in May was 5.3 percent, the lowest rate since January 2008, when it was also 5.3 percent.

Georgia's jobless rate remained above the comparable U.S. rate of 4.7 percent in May, but it was still down 0.2 percent from the 5.5 percent rate in April and well below the 5.9 percent rate of a year ago.

"The rate dropped because more Georgians were working, " Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said in a statement today. "We had the fewest unemployed workers since the beginning of the recession, and our labor force continued to increase."

Butler said the reasons for the decline in Georgia's rate show a stark contrast to the decrease in the national jobless rate in the same period.

"The big reason for the drop in the national rate had nothing to do with employment or jobs," Butler said. "It all had to do with the fact that 458,000 people dropped out of the nation's work force and that is not a good reason."

The number of employed residents in Georgia rose by 14,571 to 4,601,711, while the number of unemployed residents fell by 10,240 to 255,467, its lowest level since December 2007. The labor force grew by 4,331 to 4,857,178 in May. It has grown by 72,755 since the beginning of this year.

There was a strong over-the-year increase of 124,600 jobs, up by 2.9 percent from 4,245,900 in May 2015. The national job growth rate for the same period was 1.7 percent.

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