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Atlanta Unemployment Rate Shows Encouraging Trend

March 30th, 2012

Metro Atlanta’s jobless rate seems to be moving in the right direction.

Nine percent of Atlantans were unemployed in February, slightly better than January’s rate of 9.1 percent. It’s not a huge improvement, but one labor economist says there’s reason to be optimistic.

Despite the small month-to-month decrease in Atlanta’s jobless rate, it’s almost a full point lower than where it was a year ago. Tom Smith, a professor at Emory’s Goizueta Business School, says that’s an encouraging sign.

“Any one month, you may have only a very small decrease,” Smith says, “What we’re seeing is very small decreases in unemployment. But we are seeing large decreases over 12 months, 15 months, and those are the kinds of changes that we really like to see in the economy.”

Smith says to ensure long-term economic growth, government leaders should focus more on education.

“More education credits, instead of decreasing the budgets in education, trying to make sure that we’re increasing the budgets in education,” he explains, “Educated workers make more productive workers.”

Smith says government officials have implemented incentives, such as tax credits for the film industry. But he says it’s unclear whether those will translate into sustainable economic growth.