Another bit of dreary news for the Savannah economy, although the Georgia Department of Labor is once again trying to put a positive spin on it.
The Savannah metro area’s unemployment rate “decreased” from 8.6% in March to 8.5% in April, according to the DOL press release, but — as I keep noting — those numbers are not seasonally adjusted. Employment pretty much always improves in the spring and then nosedives in June; that’s just the seasonal pattern.
The best measure of the unemployment rage is to look at year over year comparisons. As the press release notes: “The jobless rate in the metro Savannah area in April a year ago was 8.3 percent.”