State Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said today that the number of employed Georgians was up 12,060 to almost 5 million, an all-time high.

January 2020 labor statistics also revealed a record number of jobs, exceeding 4.5 million.

“Significantly outpacing last year’s numbers, January 2020 labor statistics are reporting record data across the board,” said Georgia Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler. “The number of Georgians employed is the highest ever, the number of unemployed is the lowest since 2001, and EmployGeorgia.com is now listing over 101,000 on-line jobs available for Georgians today.”

The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.1 percent equaling an all-time low for Georgia. January 2020 came in 0.7 percentage points lower than last January’s rate of 3.8 percent.

Georgia began 2020 with a record high 4,987,996 employed residents. January showed an increase of 12,060 since December 2019. This number has increased by 89,900 since January of 2019. 

Jobs in Georgia were up 9,800 from the end of 2019 and were up 53,100 over the year, reaching an all-time high of 4,649,900.

Several sectors saw an increase in job activity among their industry in January 2020. The state added more than 1,500 jobs in three sectors:

Trade, transportation, utilities – 3,100

Leisure, hospitality – 2,000

Education and health services – 1,800

“January 2020 labor statistics continue to show a strong job market in Georgia,” said Butler. “We are seeing a record number of online jobs on EmployGeorgia.com giving us the highest two-month figure on record.”

Employ Georgia posted more than 108,000 statewide job listings during the month of January, up 10 percent from December 2019 and up 22 percent from January of last year. This record-breaking total gave EmployGeorgia.com a total of 206,269 listings from December 2019 through January 2020.

Georgia’s labor force was up 9,950 to 5,147,542, an all-time high for the state. This total was up 1.1 percentage points from this time last year.

Although unemployment claims showed an increase of 31 percent from December 2019 to January 2020, the state witnessed a historically low number of total claims. The state of Georgia has not seen a lower number of claims since 1975 when the labor force was considerably fewer in number.