Georgia’s economy is benefiting from the tailwinds of people moving to the state from the rest of the nation (domestic net migration), electric vehicle (EV) and supplier-related construction, and general manufacturing investments, while also being buffeted by the headwinds of national job market compression and global growth woes, according to Economic Forecasting Center Director Rajeev Dhawan of Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business.
“Georgia created 162,500 jobs in calendar year 2022 (Q4 to Q4), but job growth slowed to 100,200 in calendar year 2023, with 80 percent of the job gains in lower-wage-paying sectors (e.g. hospitality, retail, social assistance, gig economy, and most of healthcare) that also produce part-time jobs with low consumer purchasing power,” Dhawan said today (Feb. 28) during his semi-annual Economic Forecasting Webinar for Atlanta and Georgia.
“By contrast, high paying catalyst sector jobs ‒ professional and business services (corporate), wholesale (business-to-business), information technology, and finance ‒ which are the trigger point for the growth multiplier process, underperformed in 2023. These four sectors together produced 40 percent of the job growth the state saw in 2021 and 2022. But in 2023 their combined contribution was less than 5 percent,” Dhawan said. “It’s not just the absolute number of new jobs created that matter, but also the quality of jobs – driving everything from income growth to consumer spending and ending with tax collections. For example, net sales tax collections were up by just 0.2 percent (year-over-year) in January 2024 compared to double digit growth in late 2022.”
“The drumbeat of layoff announcements at big companies in the last three months – UPS, Delta Air Lines, Truist, Newell Brands, Norfolk Southern, The Home Depot, and Block Inc. among them – doesn’t augur well for the job prospects in the corporate sector, which will have a…
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