Douglasville Gets Better Job Numbers

The job picture in Douglasville and Douglas County was much brighter than we thought at the end of 2011, but that means January’s unemployment numbers look worse.

The jobless rate was 11 percent in the city and 9.6 percent in the county in January, according to preliminary figures the Georgia Department of Labor released today.

Those figures are much better than the preliminary figures for December——but not as much better as the revised December numbers.

The Labor Department now says unemployment was 10.8 percent in the city and 9.6 percent in the county in December.

Along with the usual refinements that can move the percentage by a couple of tenths of a point, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the state department just conducted an annual benchmarking to improve the job data’s accuracy.

As a result, Douglas County had a workforce of 68,734, including 62,244 with jobs, in December; the original December numbers were 58,165 people employed in a workforce of 64,762. That’s a 6 percent increase in the workforce.

The number of people with jobs in Douglasville and the number in the workforce increased by 323 and 277, respectively.

Because the local job numbers are not adjusted for seasonal factors, such as a post-holiday slowdown in retail sales and a winter lull in construction, the most meaningful comparison is with the statistics from a year ago, not a month ago.

In January 2011, Douglas County’s unemployment rate was 11.1 percent. In the 12 months that followed, 1,711 additional county residents found jobs, raising the total to 61,699, the state Labor Department found.

For Douglasville, the January 2011 jobless rate was 12.1 percent, and the number of employed city residents rose by 374 over the next 12 months.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for the 28-county Atlanta metro area, which includes Douglas, rose from a revised 8.9 percent in December to 9.2 percent in January. That’s down from 10.3 percent a year earlier.

The Labor Department said the rate increased because of layoffs in construction, manufacturing, retail trade, transportation, warehousing, and administrative and support services.

In the 10-county area served by the Atlanta Regional Commission, the January jobless rate was 9.1 percent, up from a revised 8.9 percent in December but down a point from 10.1 percent in January 2011.

Statewide, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped from 9.4 percent in December to 9.2 percent in January, compared with 10.1 percent in January 2011. The state gained 83,700 jobs from January to January, the biggest growth for Georgia since 2006, the Labor Department said.

Professional and business services accounted for the biggest chunk of that growth with 37,000 new jobs, followed by retail trade with 15,100 new jobs, health care and social assistance with 11,100, and manufacturing with 7,300.

The state rate remained above the national rate of 8.3 percent in January, down from 8.5 percent in December and 9.1 percent in January 2011.

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