North Fulton Today

Georgia’s unemployment rate in July was 3.7%, only slightly higher than it was in March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit the United States, the Georgia Department of Labor (DOL) reported.

The state’s unemployment rate is substantially lower than the national average of 5.4%, the DOL said.

“After ending Georgia's participation in the federal unemployment insurance programs in June, the state has seen growth of almost 84,000 jobs and has seen a 300% increase in the number of people employed from June to July," Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said in the report. "We are seeing all-time high job numbers in many sectors. The job market is saturated with opportunities for job seekers, and we are working to connect employers with candidates for long-term employment."

In July, Fulton County had an unemployment rate of 3.9%, also lower than the national average, the labor department said. It was far below the 10.1% the county had in the same month a year earlier.

But while unemployment is down, inflation is rising faster than wages, researchers Jason Furman and Wilson Powell III wrote in an article for the Peterson Institute of International Economics published in late July. Inflation has been increasing “dramatically," they wrote.

“Over the last three months, nominal compensation for all civilian workers rose at a 2.8% annual rate,” they said. “Prices, however, have risen even more rapidly than wages, and so inflation-adjusted compensation fell over the last three months and is now lower than it was in December 2019.”

However, Mark Vitner, managing director and senior economist for Wells Fargo, said inflation won’t be as bad as it was in decades past, The Business Journal reported.

“Most of the run-up in inflation that we are seeing is due to some temporary supply shortages and bottlenecks in the supply process because one or two key parts are missing, such as semi-conductor chips,” Vitner said.