State Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said that in April Georgia’s unemployment rate continued to fall.

Butler also noted that preliminary numbers showed year-over-year gains in:

• jobs

• employment, and

• workforce.

At the same time, claims for unemployment insurance were down when compared to last April.

“The annual numbers continue to be strong,” Butler said.  “While April numbers were somewhat down, the long-term numbers all trend in the right directions.”

Nationally, the unemployment rate dropped to 3.6 percent in April. Georgia’s rate also fell to 3.8 percent, a drop of .1 percentage points. A year ago, Georgia’s unemployment rate sat at 4.2 percent.

Meanwhile, Georgia’s job total fell by 14,900 in April. The total was 4.59 million jobs.  

Even with the monthly loss, Georgia was still up nearly 70,000 jobs when compared to last April.

“You see this happen from time to time,” Butler said. “Monthly numbers fluctuate. But all the trends look good.”

For annual job growth, the top sectors were:

• Education/health services, 18,900

• Professional/business services, 14,700

• Leisure/hospitality, 13,500.

The monthly losses in labor force and employed residents were much smaller.

Both dropped much less than .5 percent.

Georgia’s labor force slipped by 10,247 versus a total work force of more than 5.1 million. And, even with the monthly loss, the labor force grew by more than 4,000 from the same month a year ago.

The change in employed residents was even smaller, just 6,882 lost among a total of 4.91 million. Again, even with the monthly loss, the annual number was still up by 17,563. 

At the same time, new claims for unemployment were up by about 12 percent compared with last month. For the year, they were down by 2 percent.