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The jobless rate in Georgia hit a record high in January, jumping to 8.6 percent, the state’s Labor Department announced Thursday. December’s rate was 8.1 percent, and the layoffs that started last year in construction and manufacturing have kept washing through the economy.
Double-digit unemployment is coming this year, predicted Emily Sanders, president and CEO of Sanders Financial Management in Norcross. “I think this recession will be longer and deeper than the pundits have said,” she said. “It stops when real estate hits the bottom —- which it has not. It stops when corporate profitability hits bottom —- which it has not.”
For Keith D. Guernsey of Duluth, it could stop with a good job offer. Guernsey, 56, has worked for three decades in sales and sales management. But he left a job in June and hasn’t landed another. He says that attitudes about age have amplified the economics of a downturn. “There is no value to experience,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
Nationally, about 667,000 people last week filed first-time unemployment claims, the Employment and Training Administration announced Thursday. A record-high 5.1 million Americans now receive those benefits. Because the work force is much larger now than in decades past, proportionally, that is less than during two previous recessions.
But as dismal as job numbers are, they may be understating the economic pain, said Charles W. McMillion, president and chief economist of MBG Information Services. Layoffs now come against a broad backdrop of stress to household finances, he said. “Home prices continued to rise in the 1980-82 recession. Home prices continued to rise in the OPEC recession of the early 1970s. This is really a unique time.” But even in the worst of times, hiring goes on. State officials say Texas-based Big Tex Trailer Manufacturing plans to open a new plant in Cordele, creating 130 jobs.
Still, the odds are not good now for job-seekers —- they outnumber job openings by roughly four-to- one, officials estimate. That makes for unemployment —- or compromise. Linda Williamson, 45, of Alpharetta was laid off Jan. 8 from a job as a technology trainer. She was cut one week shy of becoming vested in her retirement payment benefit. For a little while, she resisted going to the unemployment office to file for benefits, but then she caved in to financial reality.
“It is scary,” she said. “I went there five times, and there was a line every time. And each time I went, the line was longer.” A week ago, she started a six-month job with a dentist moving his office to Alpharetta. “At six months, we’ll sit down and talk,” she said. Nearly 413,000 Georgians are now looking for work. While health care has been the only growing sector, there has been steady demand for temporary workers who have financial expertise, said Emily Carlson, area vice president for north Atlanta for national staffing company Randstad.
“Because of the credit crunch, they don’t have the access to credit that they did before,” she said, “so it’s important that they manage the money that they do have. When the project is done, they can let the temps go.” Because staffing agencies offer the hope of jobs —- even temporarily —- they are awash in applications, said Michelle Brewer, senior staffing manager for Ajilon.
Unemployment typically crests near the end of a downturn or after an expansion has begun. For instance, Georgia’s previous high-water mark came in 1983 as the economy was emerging from what was, at the time, the longest recession since the Great Depression. This time, virtually no economist predicts an imminent turnaround, which might mean many months of rising joblessness.
“We are officially sailing in uncharted economic waters,” said Michael Thurmond, state labor commissioner.
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