Atlanta losing jobs, while other metro areas gaining

[MovedfromFL]

I think we're about to see some big job losses in finance (ie the Bank of America plan to lay off 10,000). The banking/ finance industry is poised to decline again, like after the 2008 mess. That will hurt white collar jobs (and the housing market in Atlanta) even more.

[testa50]

Originally Posted by MovedfromFL

I think we're about to see some big job losses in finance (ie the Bank of America plan to lay off 10,000). The banking/ finance industry is poised to decline again, like after the 2008 mess. That will hurt white collar jobs (and the housing market in Atlanta) even more.

Atlanta is only a moderate player in commercial banking. I see weakness in finance employment here mainly as a symptom of our weak housing market, not a major cause of it. Definitely it won't help that commercial banks are scaling back: Suntrust announced similar but more modest plans a month or so ago.

Poor Charlotte; they were hit just as hard if not harder by the recession than we were, and this news will hurt them more than anyone.

[Mutiny77]

Originally Posted by testa50

Atlanta is only a moderate player in commercial banking. I see weakness in finance employment here mainly as a symptom of our weak housing market, not a major cause of it. Definitely it won't help that commercial banks are scaling back: Suntrust announced similar but more modest plans a month or so ago.

Poor Charlotte; they were hit just as hard if not harder by the recession than we were, and this news will hurt them more than anyone.

The 3,500 jobs to be eliminated initially won't affect Charlotte as much since they are supposed to be in investment banking, but proposed cuts later on will hurt more. That Countrywide deal was really, really bad for BOA.

[toll_booth]

Originally Posted by testa50

To emphasize my point earlier about the three "problem sectors" of Atlanta's job market (Government, Finance, and Construction), here's a chart I made based on BLS data:



The data runs from January 2007 to July 2011. As you can see, finance and construction bled jobs continuously and are barely stabilizing even now. Government was actually pretty robust in 2007-2009, and was buoyed by the census in 2010, but never recovered from last year's summer dip and is now at its lowest level ever.

The "good" news is that employment besides these three sectors seems to have stabilized thoroughly and is growing slightly. It grew between July 2009 and July 2010, and it grew once more between July 2010 and July 2011. We need faster growth than we had these last two years, of course, but it's a start.

Wow. That almost implies that with the major exceptions of the financial and construction fields, the job losses haven't been as bad as we thought.