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Hurricane Irma Has Slight Impact on Georgia's Job Numbers for September

Jobs are down slightly in the state due to Hurricane Irma’s impact on Coastal Georgia. State Labor Commissioner Mark Butler says the storm caused Georgia’s job numbers to fall an unemployment claims to rise in September. Butler said a 240 percent jump for the month in the coastal region drove the state’s numbers to some degree.

"We saw jobs go down, just slightly, as a matter of fact it wasn’t even a one-tenth of a point decrease,” according to Butler. “It was about 500 jobs fewer than we had in the previous month.”

In addition, the storm affected the number of unemployment claims.

“We also saw claims go up, now a lot of those claims are going to be due to people having to file claims because of the businesses being damaged and maybe an individual couldn’t go back to work for a week. A lot of those individuals have already gone back to work.”

The commissioner said September’s numbers an aberration.

“It wasn’t because of some kind of economic issue that happened where there was some problem with the economy,” accordant Butler. Most of what we saw with the jobs and initial claims has to do with the storm. You can kind of scratch those off at least for one month. We’ll probably have a better picture when we see next month’s numbers when it comes to initial claims and also for jobs.

Credit Department of Labor
Commissioner Mark Butler

September’s unemployment rate was 4.5 percent, down from 5.4 percent last year.

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