We welcome you to JobBank USA and hope your job hunting experience
is a pleasant one. We hope you find our resources useful.
September 4, 2006
A new report on the state of Georgia at work contains mixed news: the state has more jobs than it did a year ago, but Georgia is still struggling to recover from the 2001 recession.
The new report primarily used numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Budget and Policy Institute Executive Director Alan Essig told 11Alive that the numbers showed Georgia’s median wages to be the highest in the southeast, but remain lower than before the recession. The recovery has left many Georgians behind.
The Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council’s Labor Day picnic was quieter than usual. One attendee, Clarence Towns, wondered what would happen next, now that the G.M. plant in Doraville, where he worked for 27 years, is set to close.
“I have several different skills,” Towns said. “The company sent me to school, so with that I could get a job.” But Towns also doubted that he would make the same kind of money he made at G.M.
Essig, who authored the report, said Towns is not alone. Georgia’s median wage was pegged at about $3,000 below its pre-recession level.
“What we’re growing is the service industry jobs, the low wage jobs,” Essig said. “The manufacturing jobs are disappearing, and we’re not replacing a different type of job sector with high-wage jobs.”
Georgia lost 80,000 manufacturing jobs in the past five years.
The report found that last year alone the state added 100,000 new jobs, but most were in low-wage sectors.
People with high-wage jobs earned 1.4% more from 2004 to 2005, but pay for those in median-wage jobs dropped 1.3%, and workers in low-wage jobs took home 3.3% less.
Also, the percentage of Georgia kids in poverty jumped from 18.8% to 20.5%.
“Georgia was one of only four states that showed an increase in poverty,” Essig said, “and one of only eight states that showed an increase in the number of the uninsured.”
Labor groups are hoping to turn those numbers into political gains come November. Lieutenant Governor Mark Taylor has made jobs an issue in his challenge to Governor Sonny Perdue.
“It’s about good-paying jobs here in Georgia that have left our country through outsourcing and layoffs,” Taylor said. “Our manufacturing economy has left this state.”
But a spokesman for the Perdue campaign said the Governor’s policies made Georgia’s economy healthier than it was under Democratic Governor Roy Barnes.
The report did show that some progress had been made, however. In the last 25 years, the state has cut almost in half the number of workers who didn’t finish high school. Also, the wage gap between men and women is still there, although it is shrinking. However, significant wage gaps remain between white workers and African American and Latino workers.
Email This Page!