Employment data released last week by the Georgia Department of Labor paint a fairly dismal picture of the local job market, but there are a few bright spots.
The number of initial claims for unemployment insurance in the Savannah metro area in August was down a solid 24 percent compared to August 2012. The statewide decline was 22 percent.
The statewide unemployment rate in August fell to a seasonally adjusted 8.7 percent in August, tied with North Carolina and the District of Columbia for sixth worse in the nation.
According to the monthly survey of payroll establishments, the Savannah metro area’s total employment was 157,400 in August. That’s down 200 jobs from a year ago.
Some of the impacts of the sequester are now coming more clearly into focus.
The Savannah metro area (Chatham, Effingham and Bryan counties) lost 400 federal government jobs in the last 12 months.
That doesn’t include the number of jobs lost among contractors who have traditionally worked for federal agencies.
The Hinesville-Fort Stewart Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Liberty and Long counties, has lost 500 federal payroll jobs over the past year. Overall employment in metro Hinesville remained flat at 19,700 compared to a year ago.
In the metro Savannah area, the loss of federal jobs was more than offset by an increase in state and local government employment. The nature of those positions is not detailed in the monthly estimates for individual metro areas, but well over half of state and local government employees in Georgia work in education.
Overall, Georgia lost 4,500 federal jobs over the past year, about half of which were from the Department of Defense. Government employment in the state declined by 1.3 percent over the last 12 months, while statewide private sector employment increased by 2.8 percent.
For the Savannah metro area private sector, only two categories have shown robust growth over the past year. Retail trade added 800 jobs over the last year. Leisure and hospitality added 600 jobs.
Those sectors provide some perfectly fine jobs for folks, but those aren’t the areas that we’d like to see leading an employment recovery.
Local employment fell over the last year in financial activities, professional and business services, information and construction.
Ugh.
So why is private sector job growth in the Savannah metro area lagging so far behind statewide growth?
In addition to our vulnerability to federal cuts, we are also still dealing with problems related to overbuilding during the boom years. We simply have a lot of excess capacity in many sectors.
We’ll see August’s local unemployment rate estimate later this week. That number will almost certainly be lower than the rate in July, but local estimates are not adjusted for ordinary seasonal trends.
City Talk appears every Sunday and Tuesday. Bill Dawers can be reached via billdawers@comcast.ne and http://www.billdawers.com. Send mail to 10 E. 32nd St., Savannah, GA 31401.
