Atlanta Last in US for July Jobs (Columbus, Perry: health insurance, job market)

[mceis]

Per the Atlanta Business Chronicle, Atlanta was last in the country (top 100 markets) in job creation in July.

Like so many others have stated, I'm not sure why people move here. Crime, traffic, lack of water, disastrous schools, and no idea of what it wants to be. This town needs to figure out it's identity quickly.

[K-SawDude]

Link?

Oy, that's not good news to hear. I thought I'd heard job prospects were looking up....

[testa50]

I don't know why publications like the ABC do this kind of stuff that's based on absolutely zero new data. This data has been available for weeks.

Some posts I've already made analyzing the exact same data:

Originally Posted by testa50

New labor report available:

http://www.dol.state.ga.us/pdf/pr/nonag_msa.pdf

A bad month for Georgia as a whole, but for Atlanta it is basically treading water. We lost 12,300 jobs, and basically all of them (12,100) were accounted for by government job losses, yet again. When school gets back in for the August report hopefully we can finally post some positive numbers. The other two of my three "problem sectors", finance (-400 jobs) and construction (-400 jobs), more than make up the rest of the gap.

Some bright spots:

1,400 jobs gained in manufacturing (4,300 gained since last year)
600 jobs gained in professional, scientific, and technical (6,000 gained since last year--although the professional and business sector has shed an equal number of admin jobs)
Federal government has stopped bleeding jobs and is now simply neutral

The rest of the state lost 5,000 private sector jobs and another 12,000 government jobs. Athens and Columbus were really the only cities in Georgia that had an okay month (with private sector job growth).

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.

Yeah, it sucks we were last in the country. But what the article doesn't tell you is that Atlanta actually ADDED jobs if you don't consider government, finance, or construction.

Not trying to be a cheerleader here (there's not much to be a cheerleader about, as I've said all along, as we are very stagnant), but I don't know why the people who put together these sorts of articles for a living can't manage to do the sort of basic analysis that takes me 15 minutes in excel. Whatever.

[BringBackCobain]

Those idiots down at the Capitol need to hurry up and scrap Georgia's income tax and adopt the Texas model before it's too late. Atlanta's economy is looking less and less sun belt and more and more rust belt as the months drag on. The chasm between Houston/Dallas and Atlanta may soon be too wide to close.

It doesn't have to be this way. When it comes to company relocations and what factors are considered, Atlanta beats the Texas cities if an east coast location, moderate weather, natural beauty, and more developed infrastructure were the only factors. Atlanta also wins in the category of subjective intangibles, such as name recognition and the modern zietgist for young professionals. When schools, crime, and traffic are considered, I would say it's a tie. So, Atlanta would still be the winner. However, when it comes to the bottom line ($), Atlanta will always loose. No income tax trumps every advantage Atlanta has, not to mention its disadvantages, most notably a reputation that took an absolute beating in the 2000s.

I never thought I would see the day when Atlanta, the booming sun belt metropolis of the 1990s, was dead last in job growth. But in an era of socialism, over-regulation, big government, unemployment, ballooning debt, and tax increases, its going to take more than just a nice name and a pretty face to lure some of those oh-so-scarce jobs to Atlanta.

[lastminutemom]

I think Dallas and Austin have lots of appeal for young professionals, maybe even Houston, though I think it is dreadful.

I think close in housing is cheaper in TX (at least Dallas and Houston) than metro Atlanta, though that is just my gut instinct.

[Cameron H]

Originally Posted by BringBackCobain

Those idiots down at the Capitol need to hurry up and scrap Georgia's income tax and adopt the Texas model before it's too late.

Or you could do what Texas actually did and grow government fast enough to offset private sector job losses. Since 2000, Governor Perry added 300,000 public sector jobs -- fully one-third of all jobs added in Texas during that period. There's your "Texas model."

[shivtim]

The sad facts behind Rick Perry’s Texas miracle - The Washington Post
"Consider the Texas that Perry holds up to the rest of the nation for admiration. It has the fourth-highest poverty rate of any state. It tied with Mississippi last year for the highest percentage of workers in minimum-wage jobs. It ranks first in adults without high school diplomas. Twenty-six percent of Texans have no health insurance — the highest percentage of medically uninsured residents of any state. It leads the nation in the percentage of children who lack medical insurance. Texas has an inordinate number of employers who provide no insurance to their workers, partly because insurance rates are high, thanks to an absence of regulations."


Remind me again why you want Atlanta to be like Texas?

[Cameron H]

Originally Posted by shivtim

Remind me again why you want Atlanta to be like Texas?

Because no state income tax. Never mind that total state taxes in Georgia are $100.36/$1,000 (rank 34), compared to $95.49/$1,000 (rank 42) in Texas.

No state income tax. That's all you need to know. Don't ask questions.

[K-SawDude]

Originally Posted by BringBackCobain

I never thought I would see the day when Atlanta, the booming sun belt metropolis of the 1990s, was dead last in job growth. But in an era of socialism, over-regulation, big government, unemployment, ballooning debt, and tax increases, its going to take more than just a nice name and a pretty face to lure some of those oh-so-scarce jobs to Atlanta.

Since when did Atlanta and Georgia become symbols for "socialism," "overregulation," "tax increases," and "big government"? You make GA sound like Vermont or Sweden or something, as if this is the cause of stagnant unemployment here.

[shivtim]

If I had a dollar for every time I've seen "You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Cameron H again"....