{"id":1823,"date":"2011-12-22T10:37:12","date_gmt":"2011-12-22T15:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/?p=1823"},"modified":"2011-12-22T10:53:51","modified_gmt":"2011-12-22T15:53:51","slug":"savannah-metro-unemployment-falls-to-8-4-in-november-but-the-devil-is-in-the-details","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2011\/12\/22\/savannah-metro-unemployment-falls-to-8-4-in-november-but-the-devil-is-in-the-details\/","title":{"rendered":"Savannah metro unemployment falls to 8.4% in November, but the devil is in the details"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"e26b170012445c56d240655bdd03f7bf\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: left; margin: 10px 10px 10px 0;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-5595881567027133\";\r\n\/* Medium Rectangle *\/\r\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"8584504377\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 300;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 250;\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>From the Georgia Dept. of Labor this morning: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nState Labor Commissioner Mark Butler announced today that the preliminary unemployment rate in metro Savannah decreased to 8.4 percent in November, down six-tenths of a percentage point from 9.0 percent in October. The jobless rate in metro Savannah in November a year ago was also 9.0 percent. [Note: these numbers are not seasonally adjusted.]<\/p>\n<p>The rate declined because the number of jobs increased by 300. Most of the growth was in the private service-related industries, such as retail trade and education and health care.<\/p>\n<p>Metro Athens had the lowest area rate at 6.9 percent, while metro Dalton had the highest at 11.8 percent.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Georgia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate had its largest one-month decline since 1977, falling to 9.9 percent from 10.2 percent in October. The jobless rate was 10.4 percent in November a year ago.<\/p>\n<p>The state rate dropped because of an increase of 22,400 jobs. In addition to retail trade, growth also came in financial and business services and education and health care.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So that&#8217;s another lame analysis of its own data from the Dept. of Labor. Savannah metro unemployment dropped by .6% because a measly 300 jobs were added?<\/p>\n<p>Hardly.<\/p>\n<p>You can go <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dol.state.ga.us\/pdf\/pr\/laborforce.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> to look at some of the hard data. As I noted previously, there are two different monthly surveys of employment data. One is a survey of establishments that actually have employees. That survey shows Georgia and Savannah with fewer jobs than a year ago. The unemployment rate data comes from a survey of households, and is subject to a wide range of variables not covered by the establishment survey.<\/p>\n<p>According to the data released this morning, the Savannah metro area in November had a civilian labor force of 175,728, up from 174,507 a year ago. The Savannah metro area population has almost certainly increased by at least 1% in the last year, but the labor force has increased at a much slower rate. In the same time 2,156 more residents report being employed (160,952 compared to 158,796 a year ago).<\/p>\n<p>As a point of comparison, there were 172,091 employed persons in Nov. 2007, with a labor force of 178,738.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, if we had the same number of Savannah metro residents working or trying to find work as we had in 2007, the unemployment rate would be 9.95%.<\/p>\n<p>So let&#8217;s not get too excited by this monthly decline. Here&#8217;s what it looks like in the DOL&#8217;s bar graph:<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Picture-38.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"1824\" data-permalink=\"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2011\/12\/22\/savannah-metro-unemployment-falls-to-8-4-in-november-but-the-devil-is-in-the-details\/picture-38\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Picture-38-e1324567947937.png?fit=670%2C464\" data-orig-size=\"670,464\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Picture 38\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Picture-38-e1324567947937.png?fit=300%2C207\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Picture-38-e1324567947937.png?fit=594%2C411\" tabindex=\"0\" role=\"button\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Picture-38-e1324567947937.png?resize=594%2C411\" alt=\"\" title=\"Picture 38\" width=\"594\" height=\"411\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1824\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>By the way, the official unemployment rate for November in the city of Savannah is 9.8%, down from 10.6% a month ago (the labor force shrank by 100 while about 300 more people reported having jobs). I&#8217;ll try to look more closely at the data for the city of Savannah &#8212; especially the size of the labor force &#8212; in a future post.<\/p>\n<div class=\"e26b170012445c56d240655bdd03f7bf\" data-index=\"4\" style=\"float: none; margin:4px 0 4px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-5595881567027133\";\r\n\/* Another large rectangle *\/\r\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"0042810896\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 336;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 280;\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Georgia Dept. of Labor this morning: State Labor Commissioner Mark Butler announced today that the preliminary unemployment rate in metro Savannah decreased to 8.4 percent in November, down six-tenths of a percentage point from 9.0 percent in October.&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2011\/12\/22\/savannah-metro-unemployment-falls-to-8-4-in-november-but-the-devil-is-in-the-details\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[31],"class_list":["post-1823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economics","category-livingsavannah","tag-employment"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Picture-38-e1324567947937.png?fit=670%2C464","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gN9R-tp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}