The state of Georgia’s unemployment rate continues to drop, with the unemployment rate surpassing pre-pandemic levels of employment this past month.
The Department of Labor reported on Dec. 23 that the Georgia Mountains Region has reached a record low level of unemployment, with only 1.7 percent of the region’s workforce reportedly unemployed.
“We have fully recovered from this pandemic when it comes to employed Georgians, employing more people today than before the pandemic struck,” Department of Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said in a Dec. 16 press release. “The hard work is still in front of us as job creation is outpacing new workers in the labor force.”
This time last year, the state and Northeast Georgia region were at their highest unemployment rates in years as the COVID-19 pandemic surged before vaccines became available to the general public. November of 2021, the state recorded an all-time low unemployment rate of 2.8 percent.
According to the state, the number of unemployed Georgians is down to its lowest figure since December 2000. But even with those record-high numbers, there’s still a workforce shortage.
“We are seeing the highest number of employed Georgians in our state’s history,” Butler says. “Looking towards the new year, our focus is on attracting more people to join the workforce in 2022.”
With an estimated 300,000 open positions across the state and the number of job-seekers lower than pre-pandemic levels, those empty positions are hard to fill. But Butler says that in terms of economic recovery, this is a good problem to have.
“We have regained almost all of the jobs we lost during the pandemic; however, the number of job seekers is still below pre-pandemic numbers,” Butler says. “Creating more jobs becomes very difficult if we can’t fill vacancies in the 300,000 jobs that are currently open. It’s a good problem to have and shows how strong Georgia’s recovery has been especially compared to other states our size.”
