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Last week, I reported that employment in the Augusta Metropolitan Statistical Area has surpassed pre-COVID levels, but what about other labor market indicators? Unemployment in February 2020 was 3.8% and it is currently 3.6%. Unemployment spiked to 10.8% in April 2020, but fell rapidly and has been below 4% since June 2021. The labor force (those employed and unemployed) was 270,353 in February 2020. It fluctuated a lot over the next 12 months before settling into a narrow band either side of 264,000. Although employment has recovered, and unemployment is

The 2024 session of the Georgia Legislature is in the history book. Gov. Brian Kemp has finished signing or vetoing legislation passed during the session and the postmortems are underway. The Columbia County Chamber of Commerce held its annual post-legislative breakfast on May 9. The keynote speaker was one of the leaders of the Georgia Legislature, House Speaker Jon Burns. Burns touched on some of what he sees as the most important bills passed during the session, most of which the governor has signed. He started with the legislature’s consistency

We have done it! The Augusta Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) employment has finally surpassed pre-covid levels. Employment now stands at 247,600, surpassing the pre-covid peak of 246,400. By contrast, the U.S. passed the pre-covid employment level in June 2022 and Georgia did in October 2021. March was a strong month for jobs growth with the U.S. economy adding over 300,000 jobs and the Augusta MSA adding 2,100, the highest monthly increase since August 2020. Pretty much, all the job gains were in professional and business services employment, which increased by