Dog days bite jobs market

The dog days have certainly brought with them to Georgia stagnation from an economic perspective. The state Labor Department reported Thursday that Georgia’s unemployment rate reached 6.2 percent in July, matching a 15-year high.

The last time that large a percentage of Georgia’s work force was out looking for jobs was in March 1993.

And for half a year now, Georgia’s jobless rate has topped the national one, which for July was 5.7 percent. According to the Labor Department, 304,536 unemployed Georgians are looking for work, with 59,165 of those people making initial unemployment claims. Of those, 228 new claims last month were in Albany, a 27 percent increase from June and a 26.7 percent increase from July 2007.

That happened as Georgia’s job opportunities contracted 1.1 percent from June to July, a loss of 46,600 payroll jobs. The lion’s share — 27,500 — came in metro Atlanta, where the number of jobs dropped from 2.47 million to 2.44 million.

Metro Albany, thankfully, wasn’t hit as badly with a loss of 600 jobs, or 0.9 percent, bringing the labor force here to 63,800. That’s about 300 jobs below where Albany was in July 2007, when the active labor force comprised 64,100 workers.

The hardest hit areas percentage-wise in July were Augusta, where the loss of 3,800 jobs translates to a 1.7 percent drop, and Warner Robins, which had the same percentage fall with the loss of 1,000 jobs. The best employment showings were in Gainesville, where a loss of 100 jobs resulted in a 0.1 percent drop, and Athens, where 200 lost jobs dropped the rate 0.2 percent.

Labor officials say there’s no one area to point to in the report. The losses came across the board in manufacturing, construction, trade and services.

That these numbers came out like this shouldn’t be a big surprise. The combined pressures from the housing market problems, fuel prices, inflation at the grocery store and everywhere else running at its fastest pace in nearly two decades, and a hike in the minimum wage had to be released somewhere, and, unfortunately, it’s turned out to be in the unemployment line.

It’s just been one ugly, hot summer that most folks won’t mind forgetting.

The U.S. Labor Department said Thursday that workers have one more reason to want to forget it — average daily wages, when adjusted for inflation, fell by 3.1 percent from July 2007 until July 2008, the largest year-to-year decline since 1990.

The dog days, as any Southerner knows, are uncomfortable. They can’t be enjoyed, only endured ... but they don’t last forever. Neither will these numbers. It’s important to remember that one of the biggest culprits in all of this, the price of oil, peaked in mid-July and has been dropping since.

It’s far from a consensus, but some economists think the bottom hit last month on inflation, one of the primary cylinders in this engine of economic malaise. They look at those declining (though still high) energy costs and what looks to be bumper crops of soybeans and corn as signs of leveling off.

With any luck, they’re right. We sure could use some respite from the heat.

— The Albany Herald Editorial Board