Staff graphic by Laura McNuttWith a few strokes on the computer at the Tennessee Career Center on Thursday, Antonio Davis quickly realized what a difference a couple of years makes in Chattanooga's job market.
The 35-year-old UTC cook is looking for a summer job, and his options are more than triple what they were when he last came to the Career Center in 2010.
"There are more than six pages of job listings, so I'm confident I'll find something I can do," he said.
Davis and other job seekers are entering the best employment market in Tennessee and Georgia in nearly four years.
The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development reported Thursday that the jobless rate in metropolitan Chattanooga fell by four-tenths of a percent to 7.2 percent, a full percentage point below the comparable U.S. jobless rate last month. Unemployment fell in all 17 counties of Southeast Tennessee and Northwest Georgia.
The jobless rate was the lowest in the region in the Chattanooga bedroom communities in Catoosa County, Ga., where unemployment fell to a 40-month low of 5.9 percent. Just to the south, unemployment in the area was highest last month in Murray County, south of Dalton's carpet capital, where unemployment remained at a stubbornly high 12.6 percent in March.
Economists in both Tennessee and Georgia said they were surprised by how much the unemployment rate has fallen in the past six months since employment growth in both states has hovered around an annual pace of about 1 percent. That's less than half the usual job growth rate in a recovery.
"The economy is improving, but it's kind of a half-speed recovery," University of Georgia Economist Jeffrey Humphreys said. "People have not been jumping back into the workforce like we would have expected with these kind of decreases in the unemployment rate."
Humphreys said some workers whose jobs were lost during the recession have decided to retire, go back to school or have a family.
But employers still say they are getting lots of applicants for job openings.
HomeServe USA, a growing provider of emergency home repair service plans, had more than 200 applicants last week at its Chattanooga job fair. The company is adding 120 workers at its customer service center in Chattanooga, and so far has hired 18 people for the jobs, which pay from $12 to $14 an hour. "The quality of talent was definitely there and we were very pleased with the response," said Erica Messinger, the company's manager of talent acquisition.
To compete in such an environment, some unemployed Chattanoogans are going back to school to improve their skills to land a job.
Marilyn Cope, 49, lost her job with Dixie Industries a year ago, and has been searching for work ever since.
"I realize I've got to go back to school to get what I need because to get any kind of a decent job today you need an education," she said. "It's definitely different now."
University of Tennessee Economist Matt Murray said he expects the jobless rate across Tennessee to continue to decline this year, but not by much.
"We really don't see job growth strong enough to justify these decreases in the unemployment rate," he said. "There are still some headwinds in the economy and to be successful you need to have the training and skills for the jobs of today."