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Jobs Report: NE Georgia Sets Record in December

The Northeast Georgia region set records for the month of December according to the State Department of labor, which released the figures this week. Commissioner Mark Butler says the labor force, or number of people working and those actively looking for jobs, is up.

“Now why this good news, is because we have a lot of jobs right now that are currently posted and open that we need to fill in Northeast Georgia,” according to Butler. “On EmployGeorgia.com, we are currently showing over 44-hundred active job listings. So seeing that number actually go up over the month is very good news.”

Preliminary numbers show, the 12-county area also maintained positive numbers for the year, in spite of a slight increase in the unemployment rate.

“The unemployment rate increased by one-tenth of a point, bringing that rate up to 2.6 percent for the month of December. Even though we did see a very slight increase in the unemployment rate, we had some fairly good news in the jobs report.”

According to Butler, most of those unemployment claims were not permanent.

“Most of these claims actually were temporary in nature, had to do with some temporary layoffs for some seasonal factors and most of the individuals have gone back to work.”

The region, which includes Athens-Clarke, Oconee, barrow, Jackson, Madison and Oglethorpe among others, ended December with more than 300,000 employed residents.

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