Unemployment up for January in metro Albany, Southwest Georgia

ALBANY — The Georgia Department of Labor announced Thursday that the disappearance of seasonal jobs caused the metropolitan Albany’s unemployment rate to bounce up to 6.3 percent in January after it was at 6.1 percent in December. In the Southwest Georgia region, the January rate was 6.3 percent, up from 5.9 percent in December.

The rate in January 2015 was 7.6 percent in metro Albany, and 7.4 percent at the same time in Southwest Georgia.

Labor Department officials said the metro Albany rate rose as the number of jobs decreased to 61,500, down by 1.3 percent, from 62,300 in December. Most of the decrease came in trade, transportation and warehousing, along with state government.

“We did see expected job loss,” said state Labor Commissioner Mark Butler. “Most of that is going to be due to the fact that a lot of those holiday jobs go away going from December to January, and so we did see a significant job loss in that time period.”

In Southwest Georgia, the rate rose as the number of unemployed workers increased by 532 to 9,196.

Over the year, metro Albany gained 800 jobs, a 1.3 percent growth rate, up from 60,700 in January 2015. Most the gain came in the private sector, including construction, information services, financial activities, professional and business services and leisure and hospitality.

The number of metro Albany initial claims for unemployment insurance declined by 22, or 2.8 percent, to 764 in January — mostly in manufacturing — while over-the-year claims were down by 91, or 10.6 percent, from January 2015, the Labor Department said.

The number of initial claims for unemployment insurance in Southwest Georgia increased by 1.4 percent to 1,696 in January, mostly from the construction and trade industries. Over the year, claims were down by 272, or 13.8 percent, from 1,968 in January 2015, officials said.

“While it’s early, we’re off to an encouraging start,” said Aaron Johnson, assistant professor of economics at Darton State College. “We have added 800 jobs over the last 12 months, which reverses a past trend of sluggish to negative growth. I’d say low gas prices is the main contributor to that. Recently, we have seen gas prices rise a bit, so it will be interesting to see if our momentum continues over the next few months.

“Even though the unemployment rate rose over the last month, we can attribute some of that to seasonal hiring effects that aren’t adjusted in the data. What is encouraging is that the unemployment rate continues to drop over the last year. Even though our unemployment rate is still elevated relative to the rest of the state, the rate of improvement exceeds the state. That means we closed the gap with the rest of Georgia.”

Of the 14 metro areas, metro Gainesville had the lowest area jobless rate at 4.5 percent in January, while metro Dalton had the highest at 7.2 percent. Of the 11 regional areas, the River Valley area had the highest rate at 7.1 percent while the Georgia Mountains area had the lowest rate at 4.7 percent.

Georgia’s seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate for January was 5.4 percent, down from 5.5 percent in December. It was 6.3 percent in January 2015.