High unemployment rate messing with Georgia governor’s reelection campaign

According to a report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released today, for the second month in a row Georgia is leading the nation with the highest unemployment rate of 7.9 percent for the month of September 2014.  That’s down two points from August’s 8.1 percent, which was also the highest in the nation. The unemployment rate hardly changed since September 2013, when it was 8.0 percent. The average U.S. unemployment rate for September 2014 is 5.9 percent.

None one of these numbers work for Georgia Goveor Nathan Deal (R) who, while fighting it out with state Sen. Jason Carter (D) for re-election, has campaigned for a year on job creation and good economy.  Deal has repeatedly highlighted CNBC and Site Selection Magazine’s ranking of Georgia as the top state to do business.  He’s also proudly underscored that Georgia created 300,000 jobs since he took office in 2010.    

But according to BLS, Georgia is also a whopping 215,000 jobs behind its pre-recession levels. In addition, the Peach State lost 15,000 private sector jobs since August.

”This is absolutely unacceptable, said Carter in a statement. ”Gov. Deal has driven Georgia to the very bottom. By his own words, he’s rejecting facts instead of accepting responsibility for this crisis. If he can’t even see the problem, why should we trust him to fix it?

In the last debate, Deal proclaimed that jobless rates ”have no relevance, and that even economists don’t pay any attention to such statistics, focusing instead on job creation. Of course, when the unemployment rates came down under Deal’s watch in the last four years, he had no problem pointing that out.  

And the unemployment in Georgia has come down since the recession; at its highest, unemployment reached 10.7 percent in January 2010, the month that Deal took office. But in pre-recession years, the Peach State enjoyed lower than or average unemployment rates, and Georgians certainly have every right to wonder why the state has not been recovering as quickly as the rest of the nation.