Atlanta top metro area -- for job losses

/Home/Atlanta Business

Atlanta top metro area -- for job losses
September 29, 2011
By Dan Chapman
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Atlanta region lost more jobs the last year than any other metro area, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday, further evidence that the post-recessionary slump here shows little sign of abating.

Metro Atlanta shed 30,800 jobs since August 2010. Kansas City -- 12,800 positions erased -- was the closest competitor in job-losses. Nearly all of Atlanta’s peer metro areas added at least some jobs amid the slow economic recovery.

The figures add to a growing sense that Atlanta has experienced a Lost Decade. The Great Recession and its aftermath have obliterated the mid-decade’s huge job and wealth gains that put Atlanta atop the New South economic pedestal. The Atlanta region, for example, notched 2,237,100 jobs last month -- almost exactly the same amount as in early 2002.

Of equal concern are the types of jobs -- telecomm, trade, utilities, leisure -- being lost across the 28-county Atlanta region. Report after report the last few years has documented the evaporation of construction and financial industry jobs. But business leaders and economists wring their hands whenever white collar jobs fade away.

“Out of almost 400 metropolitan areas, we’re dead last and nobody is competing with us for that distinction,” said Chris Cunningham, a BLS statistician in Atlanta. “It’s pretty bad and it has been the same story for the last two, three years.”

Some small metro areas registered a greater percentage loss of jobs, but among major metro areas Atlanta was worst in both total number and percentage.

Among the job seekers spilling out the door Wednesday of the Cobb County Civic Center, few expressed surprise that work continues to disappear. Their attitudes speak volumes about the long, difficult search faced by tens of thousands of jobless Atlantans weathering 10.4 percent unemployment.

Inside the auditorium, a cross-section of mostly low-wage service and public sector industries said they were hiring. Although the men and women dressed smartly, few corporate jobs were posted.

In the 12-month period, the BLS said, metro Atlanta lost 5,500 construction jobs, 11,700 in finance and 14,500 in government. Those reflect the housing and real estate crash, as well as state and local government cutbacks.

Experts worry, though, when some of the jobs that Atlanta is pinning its future on, like information, professional and business services, disappear or barely register gains in the BLS numbers. A net 300 TV programmers, software designers and others lost their jobs.

And only 2,200 white collar professionals -- accountants, engineers, lawyers -- were hired over the last year, a 0.6 percent gain. Dallas (3.7 percent uptick), Detroit (3.0 percent) and the U.S. overall (3.0 percent) did much better in those categories.

In fact, 238 of 372 metropolitan areas added jobs the last 12 months. Major competitors, like Dallas (plus 50,900 jobs) and Houston (65,000), left Atlanta in the dust.

“It’s a little unnerving,” said Roger Tutterow, an economist at Mercer University. “No doubt we cut back employment in some of the higher end professional services firms, like law and accounting firms, during the recession and early part of the recovery. Typically, those firms have tried to weather the slowdown without reducing posisitons, but they had to make some cuts this time.”

Tutterow cautioned that the BLS figures may be revised in the future and the gloomy picture may prove sunnier. He also noted that manufacturing, written off after Nafta and China revolutionized the working world, experienced something of a comeback. Metro Atlanta added 4,100 blue-collar, make-something jobs the last year.

“We cannot continue to be a country that doesn’t make things. We need white collar and blue collar jobs,” said Chris Gillig, a laid-off executive from Alpharetta who’s starting a health care services company.

Gillig, 51, remains bullish on Atlanta.

“When I flew over Dallas yesterday all I could see was flat for miles in every direction, and cement. Plus, they had 60 or 70 days of 100-degree weather. I’m not anxious to move back there,” he said. “Atlanta has a wonderful topography and a number of amenities that will cause me to continue living here for the foreseeable future.”