The Georgia Department of Labor released much of the December data yesterday, but we’re still waiting on some of it. More on that in a moment.
Statewide, the number of people filing for unemployment each month continues to fall on a year over year basis. It’s worth noting, however, that these numbers are still well above the pre-recession trends. December is a pretty bad month for employment, as lots of temporary retail and education workers lose their jobs (as well as other sectors like shipping and delivery).
Here’s what the numbers look like in terms of unemployment insurance applications:
The statewide unemployment rate, which is adjusted for seasonal trends, fell in December, but the Dept. of Labor has not yet published the actual numbers that this is based on.
But that slight improvement in the unemployment rate, which is estimated from a survey of households, masks a key employment problem, which can be seen here in the decline in jobs as determined by a survey of establishments:
This next graph is not adjusted for seasonality, but you can still see the year over year job loss for the Savannah metro area:
The unemployment rates for cities and metro areas in December have not been released, nor — as I note above — have we seen the civilian labor force estimates used to calculate the unemployment rate. Some of those numbers are sprinkled into yesterday’s DOL press release, but I obviously prefer to just look at the raw data. I do not trust the spin in the press releases.