Unemployment rates are likely to drop during the next few
weeks. But don’t get too jolly over the joyful jobless news.

“Unemployment is cyclical,” said Doug Bachtel, a
professor of housing and consumer economics for the University of
Georgia College of Family and Consumer Sciences.

“During the holidays, unemployment rates tend to be lower
because of the huge demand in the retail sector,” he said.

“For a while, Georgia has suffered from an employment
shortage,” he said, “and retailers have had to grab any warm body
they can — vacationing teachers and students, anybody — to work
during the busy holiday season.”

However, Bachtel warned, “there are those who believe the
pending recession will hit Georgia hard.”

Georgia’s Diversified
Economy Softens Blow

Georgia usually fares well in hard times because of a
diversified economy. The hardest-hit part is likely to be rural
areas, where the economy depends precariously on agriculture.

“Rural Georgia will be hurt really badly,” Bachtel
predicted. “The state has a diversified economy, but rural
Georgia doesn’t. They are dependent on a boom-or-bust
agricultural economy.”

“The economic problems currently are in crop farming,”
said UGA economist Bill Givan. “Livestock prices are pretty
good.”

Crop farming is done mostly below Macon. Peanut growers
are faring well and tobacco farmers a little less so. “Cotton and
grains are facing low prices,” he said. “But government payments
will help.”

In general, Givan said, “rural Georgia dependent on crop
farming is having a tough time.”

Employment Rates Hit
20-Year High

A recent Georgia Department of Labor report shows
Georgia’s unemployment numbers already growing. More than 65,220
Georgians filed initial claims for unemployment insurance
benefits in October. These claims pushed the state’s jobless rate
up to 4.2 percent from 4.0 percent in September.

The new claims are 98 percent more than the 32,980
workers who filed initial claims in October 2000, when the rate
was 3.7 percent.

“The effects of Sept. 11 are clearly indicated in these
numbers,” said State Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond. “While
these layoffs are concentrated in several industries, there are
some fields for which employers are actually hiring. Those
include an array of positions in health services, education,
retail and law enforcement.”

Thurmond encourages people who’ve lost their jobs to
remember the seasonal jobs available around the holidays. “While
the available jobs may not represent the ideal,” Thurmond said,
“people are usually better served to accept temporary employment
until the job they really want comes along.”

On a month-to-month basis, the number of unemployment
claims went up by 23,147, or 55 percent, from September. Most of
the claims were filed in construction, business services, textile
manufacturing, transportation and in hotels and restaurants.

“If you compare the employment rates across the country,
some will argue that an unemployment rate of just over 4 percent
is full employment,” Bachtel said. “We are still going through
the good times. It’s going to definitely get worse.”

Military Money Boosts
Economy

The bad economic times in Georgia’s rural areas are, at
least temporarily, bolstered by the flurry of military
activity.

“The military has a big effect on our economy because we
have major military spending in this state,” Bachtel said. “It
plays a very big role in the stabilization of the economy.”

And it’s a pretty safe bet for Georgians, he said.

“Ft. Benning is a training area. Ft. Stewart is a staging
area for deployment. Kings Bay was the largest peacetime
construction project in U.S. history. Others are specialized —
Ft. Gordon is home to the signal corps — not installations
likely to get cut in federal budget cuts,” he said.

“If you’re a supplier of goods to the military, you’re
doing pretty good right now,” he said. “But the biggest effect of
the war is on consumer confidence. It seems to have sparked a
rise in the stock market, so who knows?”