Georgia’s Unemployment Rose in June

July 18th, 2013

Despite a rise in unemployment, state officials still see a silver lining in the data. WABE's John Lorinc reports.

The Georgia Department of Labor reports the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for June was 8.6%.

Although that’s an increase of 3/10ths of a point from May, state officials still see the glass as half-full.

“We actually saw the amount of initial claims, that’s the people who are newly laid off, decrease by over 15% last month,” says Labor Commissioner Mark Butler.

He says the increase in Georgia’s unemployment comes in part because school employees aren’t working in the summer and new graduates are still pounding the pavement looking for jobs.

“Our loss leader last month was actually government. Government lost 10,000 jobs last month. As a matter of fact, if you take out the job losses in government and just look at the private sector, we actually gained 9,400 jobs last month,” says Butler.

Despite the rise in unemployment from May, Georgia’s jobless rate is still down half-a-point from June 2012.

However, it’s still a full point higher than June’s national unemployment rate, which is 7.6%.