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By Michael Kanell
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friday, March 14, 2008
Nearly 41,000 Georgians filed for unemployment insurance last month —- 38 percent more than in the same month a year earlier.
Metro Atlanta represented the largest share of the claims —- 17,351, up from 12,591 in February of last year, the Georgia Department of Labor said Thursday.
Though it is too early to say for sure whether the state economy is sliding into a recession, the signals have not been good, said Adrian Cronje, Atlanta-based director of asset allocation for banking firm Wilmington Trust. Job losses have come in construction, financial services and manufacturing that is not for exports.
Georgia's economy in recent years has become more like the national economy —- and more tied to it. A Wall Street Journal survey released Thursday showed 71 percent of economists surveyed think the U.S. economy is now in a recession. Fifty-one economists responded to the survey, which was conducted March 7-11, just after the release of an employment report that showed the nation's payrolls lost 63,000 jobs in February. It was the second consecutive monthly decline.
"Some of the underlying national trends for shedding jobs are unfolding here in Georgia," said Cronje. "If the broader economy is going into recession, Georgia will not be far behind."
Jobless claims are filed by workers who have been laid off and would like to receive unemployment benefits. Those benefits, typically provided for 26 weeks, average $282 a week.
Because the number of filings is reported quickly, it is probably the closest thing to a real-time pulse on the labor market. Claims data are available much sooner than other government reports, including the payroll numbers on jobs created and the survey used to calculate the official unemployment rate.
Last week, the state Labor Department said Georgia's jobless rate increased to 5.2 percent in January, up from 4.6 percent in December. The rate was 5 percent in January in metro Atlanta, up from 4.5 percent in December.
But the claims numbers track only those who are asking for benefits. If a worker waits to file —-for whatever reason —- he or she would not be counted.
The claims number also says nothing about the other side of the equation: If companies are not hiring, it makes the labor market tough, even if layoffs are not rising.
Claims ebb and flow through the year with some periods typically producing higher numbers. Claims spike at the start of the year, for example, as retailers lay off help hired for the holidays.
So February nearly always looks better than January. As it did this time: The number of claims in January was 66,468, according to the labor department.
That is why economists generally either massage data to smooth out the seasonal variations or they compare similar periods.
Yet that exercise —- applied to the last two months —- produces two different pictures. From January 2007 to January 2008, there was just a modest 7 percent increase in claims. From February to February, however, there was a huge leap.
Emily Sanders, president of Sanders Financial in Norcross, argued the signs are not all that pessimistic.
"We are the business capital of the Southeast, and we are still having in-migration of people moving here," she said. "Technology, biotech, telecom, legal services —- they are all pretty robust here."
On the other hand, that wave of claims in February could be early signs of large-scale corporate cost-cutting.
Or perhaps, it is something in between. Which is one reason that economists often discount any single report, preferring to wait until they can average a few of them.
National claim numbers are released weekly. About 353,000 people filed first-time claims, about the same as the week before, according to the U.S. Labor Department.
The longer-term trend has been toward decay: Weekly first-time claims have been above 350,000 since late January. They have averaged 345,500 so far this year, compared with 322,000 last year and 313,000 in 2006.
The total number of laid-off workers receiving jobless benefits has jumped to more than 2.83 million people —- its highest level in nearly three years.
UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE CLAIMS
............Georgia....Atlanta
Feb. 2008....40,963....17,351
Jan. 2008....66,468....24,965
Feb. 2007....29,738....12,591
Jan. 2007....62,002....20,712
Source: Georgia Labor Department
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