GDOL Announces Seasonally Adjust Unemployment Numbers

The Georgia Department of Labor (GDOL) announced that the state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 5.2 percent in October, up one-tenth of a percentage point from 5.1 percent in September. The rate in October 2015 was 5.5 percent.

The Georgia Department of Labor Commissioner Mark Butler explains that not necessarily a bad sign. “Well, we saw the Georgia unemployment rate go up a one-tenth of a point to 5.2 percent. While that may sound bad, actually we had some very good numbers behind that unemployment rate. We’re continuing to see a large number of individuals come back into the labor force. Matter of fact, in the previous month, we actually set one of the highest number in twenty five years. Now, in October we beat that number. So, we have a new largest number in twenty five years. We had 27,000 people that were not in the labor force, looking for work, actually comeback and join the labor force. And the good news is that over 21,000 of those individuals actually found employment. So we saw more people coming back to the labor force and more people actually becoming employed,” said Butler.
The labor force consists of those who are employed, and those actively searching for a job. In October it increased to 4,945,950. The number of employed grew by 21,473 to 4,691,161.