Labor Department: Fewer People Looking For Work
People line up to enter a government job center in Madrid,Spain, Friday, May 28, 2010. Europe’s top job creator only two years ago, Spain now has the region’s highest unemployment rate at just over 20 percent and is the slowest of the major economies to emerge from the global recession. Spain’s Parliament on Thursday approved … Continued
The United States added 169,000 jobs in August and unemployment ticked down a tenth of a point to 7.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which released its monthly jobs report Friday morning.As heard on the radio.
However, even though the national unemployment rate went down, the rate of people either working or actively looking for work hit a 35-year low, ticking down from 63.4 percent to 63.2 percent.
Leonard Carlton, an associate professor of labor economics at Emory University, said that dip in civilian labor force doesn’t bode well for the country or Georgia.
“The recovery has been slower than we would like, slower than the past would suggest,” Carlton said.
He said the rate at which the economy is adding jobs is barely enough to keep up with new job seekers entering the market. Carlton added that the sectors that have seen increases in employment opportunities, like retail and the service industry, generally pay less.
“The general overall concern for the country and for Georgia is that the areas where they’re not hiring are the areas we thought of as the good, higher-paying jobs,” Carlton said.
The state employment numbers won’t be out until next week, but Sam Hall of the state labor department had a rosier outlook for Georgia. He said he expects the August employment numbers to reflect continued job growth.
“We expect to see job growth continue in Georgia through the efforts of the private sector, and we quite honestly would expect to see the unemployment rate tick back downward now,” Hall said.
Georgia’s unemployment level currently sits at 8.8 percent, while metro Atlanta’s is slightly lower at 8.6 percent. Both are higher than the national average.
The state lost 15,000 jobs last month, though Hall said that was mostly due to temporary layoffs.
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