employment has been steady, Karen said. “It was hard to find lower paid workers like dishwashers and housemaids.” She said these jobs pay between $13 and $14 an hour at the minimum.
The 17-month campaign by the Federal Reserve to reduce inflation by slowing the economy has not yet caused a recession, but it has raised interest rates significantly. There were at least some signs of economic decline.
New claims for unemployment benefits in Georgia were slightly higher this year than last, according to the Employment and Training Department.
Layoffs have been announced at a number of high-profile tech companies, including Meta, Amazon, Twitter, Microsoft and Greenlight Financial, most of which have a large presence in the state. Other companies also submitted Notice of cuts with the stateincluding David’s Bridal, which plans to cut 193 jobs, Solo Cup Operations Corp., which is cutting 84 jobs, and Packers Sanitation, which will cut 135 jobs.
Job openings in the state have fallen nearly 20% since December, according to Indeed analysisJob listing site.
However, the listings are still much higher than they were pre-pandemic.
More than 125,000 jobs were listed online in March with Ministry of Labor, including 27,400 healthcare jobs and 13,500 in the hospitality sector. Even the supposed beleaguered IT sector It has 8,900 listings.
“There are misconceptions about layoffs in tech,” said Rob McLean, president of Tech. Alpharetta-based 3Ci, It is what puts tech workers. “When Amazon turns people away, it doesn’t have to be tech professionals. It can be finance, marketing, and human resources.”
Recruitment may have slowed a bit, but many positions remain unfilled, particularly in cybersecurity, software development, and engineering, He said. “If you have these skills, you may be out of work, but you won’t be out of work for long.”
Right now, nearly all hiring managers say it’s hard to find skilled talent, and jobs take an average of 11 weeks to fill, said Amy Mangan, director of marketing at Staffing firm Robert Half in Atlanta.
She said that if these skilled people start having difficulty finding work, it would be a sign that the economy has reached a difficult stage. “This is our canary.”
One contractor has been placed before Robert Half Joseph Little, 29, has been working for about a year in Atlanta for a large building materials company as an information security systems analyst,
He said the work paid off decently and required only two days a week in an office, with flexible working hours.
Lytle, who doesn’t have a college degree, has a contract and is pretty confident his experience will help him find his next gig once that experience is over. He said he would likely go through a recruiter again, since many direct employers use an online screen to block out applicants without degrees.
And Little graduated from the US Marine Corps as a cybersecurity trainee, he said. “An undergraduate degree ticks a box, but the things you learn in the first year will be obsolete by the time you graduate. That’s how fast the IT world moves.”
A sign of continued health in employment is that Georgia’s unemployment rate hasn’t moved despite the expansion of the labor force — which includes everyone who has a job or is actively looking.
According to the Ministry of Labor, the share of working Georgians is higher than in any other state in the Southeast.
This includes the return of workers who left to take care of children, parents, or themselves, or to study full time. But some are because Georgia has continued to attract transplants from many states, According to the Census Bureau.
While the flow of people to and from Georgia goes both ways, fewer than 10 states attract more workers from Georgia than from Georgia.