Author: Admin

Georgia Labor Commissioner Bruce Thompson announced today that Georgia’s October unemployment rate was 3.6 percent, unchanged from a revised 3.6 percent in September. The unemployment rate was five-tenths lower than the national unemployment rate.

“For the third month in a row, Georgia’s unemployment rate held steady at 3.6% – a testament to commonsense, pro-business policies that make Georgia the best place to live, work, and raise a family,” said Commissioner Bruce Thompson. “While job growth has slowed nationwide, Georgia continues to drive job creation and workforce participation. This stability shows what’s possible with a state government that puts hardworking Georgians first.” 

Jobs were up by 1,500 over the month and up by 64,900 over the year to 4,985,500.

The sectors with the most over-the-month job gains included Accommodation and Food Services, 4,300; Health Care and Social Assistance, 2,200; Local Government, 1,400; Retail Trade, 1,000; and Durable Goods Manufacturing, 700. Jobs were down in Administrative and Support Services, -3,700; Transportation and Warehousing, -1,400; Information which includes Motion Picture and Sound Recording Industries, -1,300; Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation, -1,200; and Non-Durable Goods Manufacturing, -700.

Over the month, jobs were at an all-time high in Private Education and Health Services, 696,500, and Leisure and Hospitality, 536,900.

The sectors with the most over-the-year job gains included Health Care and Social Assistance, 20,200; Accommodation and Food Services, 17,100; Local Government, 12,100; Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, 7,500; and State Government, 4,500. 

Jobs were down over-the-year in Administrative and Support Services, -11,600; Information, which includes Motion Picture and Sound Recording Industries, -3,700; Wholesale Trade, -2,700; and Transportation and Warehousing, -1,800.

The labor force was up by 1,370 to 5,416,696, an all-time high, and was up by 85,853 over the past 12 months. The labor force participation rate went down from 61.8 to 61.7 percent.

The number of employed was up by 774 to 5,220,494, an all-time high, and was up by 61,395 over the past 12 months.

The number of unemployed was up by 596 to 196,202, the highest level since July 2021, and was up by 24,458 over the past 12 months.

Initial claims were up by 9,042 over the month to 28,642 in October.  Initial claims were up by 6,973 over the year.

It wasn’t so close after all. Despite the insistence of many professional pundits and most major media outlets, the 2024 elections for President and control of Congress were called relatively early. By Wednesday morning, the word “mandate” was being used frequently as part of the instant analysis.

Six days later, California has managed to count only 72% of the state’s total votes, so the overall numbers could still tighten a bit. There aren’t enough votes outstanding that will change the fact that Donald Trump won not only the electoral college in a landslide, but the popular vote total as well. As of this writing, he also had a majority of the total votes cast, leaving Vice President Harris and all other candidates combined below 50%. Republicans have flipped the Senate convincingly. Some Democrats are getting dangerously close to “election denier” territory by refusing to concede the Pennsylvania race picked up by Republicans.

They’re joined by some much more comfortable with denying results in Arizona. Republican Kari Lake came amazingly close to flipping that seat despite spending most of her time in South Florida at Mar-A-Lago and upsetting much of the traditional Arizona GOP power structure at the beginning of her failed campaign.

With the White House and the Senate come judges. Republicans may continue to thank former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for setting the precedent here. Note you’ll now hear scarce talk from Democrats about expanding the Supreme Court or ending the filibuster.

With Republicans taking most of the top offices in Puerto Rico, you have to wonder if both parties’ positions on Puerto Rican statehood will now flip. You can also see from the results nationwide and in Puerto Rico that the media’s late fixation on a comedian’s poorly timed joke about Puerto Rico didn’t seem to matter much anywhere except where Democrats were grasping at last straws.

Exit polls trashed many other narratives and beliefs of partisan leanings. Republicans have made huge gains with Hispanic voters over the last few election cycles. Members of national media should spend more time differentiating between legal immigrants and those who chose to break in front of the line. It appears those who have achieved citizenship and vote don’t appreciate their tax dollars being used to open the borders either.

The support of Native Americans swung heavily in Republicans favor as well. Perhaps all the “land acknowledgements” popularized among the left to begin meetings are only sending virtue signals to their own insular groups, where the signals that should be sent should include policies to make improvements on modern day quality of life? Per usual, the losing side is working through their stages of grief. Circular firing squads were formed before the votes were counted. The blame game is now in full force. Clearly, Republicans have a lot to be happy about. And they are. For those who perpetually look ahead, there are concerns that should temper this enthusiasm.

The MAGA base of the GOP will now expect everything they want, and nothing they don’t. They will look at the electoral and Senate maps and repeat the word “mandate” as often as possible. They will not want to focus on the apparent narrow majority in the U.S. House, which has been a constant problem of leadership and execution for any GOP led agenda for the past two years – To be honest, a lot longer than that.

Republicans will walk a fine line between appeasing that base, while holding together the collation of swing voters who flipped from supporting Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024. Too many ultra-partisans refuse to acknowledge that swing voters more often are trying to stopwho is in power because they want rational policy, not overreach.

In Georgia, there are specific warning signs that will matter in 2026. All statewide constitutional officers will be on the ballot, as well as a U.S. Senate seat. If the courts will get out of the way, a majority of the Public Service Commission should be as well.

There was a map going around in the early hours of vote counting showing the tilt toward Republicans or Democrats from 2020. Much of the country was red, showing a decided shift toward the GOP. Georgia, specifically among the Atlanta suburbs, had a recognizable concentration of blue.

Republicans have earned the right to celebrate after a successful 2024 campaign. Those interested in keeping Georgia red need to contain their gloating as much as possible.

Voters are more fickle than the partisans would have you believe. There’s also usually a bit of a course correction in the mid-terms after a Presidential election.

It’s easy to pretend that the future will be a trend line upward from the present. The reality, especially here in Georgia, is that the 2026 campaigns will face a very different environment from today. Candidates need to be very aware from the beginning that there is a lot of work required from both parties to be acceptable in any form to swing voters.

Southeast Regional Cooperative, Inc., (SERC), an Atlanta-based organization connecting the agribusiness industry in the southeast with food banks and nonprofits in their fight against food insecurity, has been selected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to receive a Regional Food System Partnerships (RFSP) grant. SERC will use the funds to develop plans for a regional service center enabling improved sourcing, logistics, production and data management for food banks and other agribusiness partners across the region.

The USDA will provide funding of $250,000. Feeding America partner state associations including Feeding Georgia, Feeding the Carolinas, and Feeding Florida, as well as the Georgia Department of Agriculture and Georgia State University, will provide additional matching funds and in-kind donations.

“The Southeast Regional Cooperative has grown from shipping 8.5 million lbs. of produce when we began in 2017, to shipping 152 million lbs. in our fiscal year ending June 2024,” said Chris Flint, executive director of the Southeast Regional Cooperative, Inc. (SERC). “We are honored to be a recipient of a USDA Regional Food System Partnerships grant and look forward to strengthening collaboration across the region with the agriculture industry, our Feeding America food banking partners and other industry parties across the region.”

Thanks to the Regional Food System Partnerships (RFSP) grant:

• SERC will engage a wide range of community partners including growers, producers, partner organizations to explore and analyze scope of work, location, value added processing, aggregation, distribution, and 3PL partnerships.

• For profit organizations and institutes of higher education will be engaged to conduct research, integrate diverse data platforms and operating systems, and optimize planning for sourcing and distribution.

• Partners will plan and design a regional service center offering freight supplier development and management, freight brokerage, weekend and evening support, and billing services, including programmatic grant administration.

• SERC will plan and develop strategies to enhance efficiencies and provide more cost-effective collaboration in critical areas including transportation management, middle supply chain logistics, value added processing and integrated data management.

• Attention will be given to developing strategies that create access for socially disadvantaged agrifood businesses, such as growers and freight carriers, with a focus on market access as well as securing funding for long term stability.

Through its Regional Food System Partnerships (RFSP), the USDA is awarding $5.2 million to 10 partnerships across 10 states. The $250,000 grant to SERC is the only one being given to a Georgia-based organization.

I can’t recall a time in my career, or maybe my life, when I’ve seen anything like Hurricane Helene.

It was impossible to believe unless you saw it up close, and even then, it is difficult to describe — pictures simply don’t do it justice.  I visited some of the hardest-hit areas in Georgia in the days following the storm, and what I saw broke my heart.

The destruction was never-ending in places, it just continued for miles and miles. And it’s even more sobering when I stop to think that some of our very own teammates — many working to restore power themselves — were facing devastating damage to their own homes, cutting their way through fallen trees (and some even walking for miles) to get to work, and waiting for power to be restored for their families.

When I saw the devastation in Augusta, Savannah, Valdosta and Vidalia — and many other areas in between — it quickly became clear to me that this was no ordinary storm. In fact, Helene was the most destructive hurricane in our company’s 140-year history, exceeding the damage caused by hurricanes Michael, Matthew and Irma combined.

Thankfully, we have a world-class team that ensured Georgia Power was ready to respond. We monitored Helene’s progress from the moment it formed and put plans into place for what we expected to be an extended restoration process. We pre-positioned more than 10,000 personnel around the state who were ready to get to work as soon as the storm passed and it was safe.  As damage assessment reports came in from across the state, we ultimately doubled the number of personnel engaged to more than 20,000 with crews coming from across the country.

Usually after a major storm, we talk about our work in terms of restoration. For Helene, we’re talking about rebuilding sections of the power grid entirely. Helene damaged more than 8,300 power poles and almost 350 transmission structures, downed more than 1,000 miles of power lines, damaged more than 4,500 transformers and toppled thousands of trees that had to be removed before power could be restored. This was a major restoration and reconnection project that had to be completed as quickly as possible. Fortunately, our team is the best in the business, and we were able to restore power to more than 1.5 million customers safely and efficiently. However, we know full reconstruction will be a much longer process.

This was a historic storm that required an unprecedented response and coordination from so many other teams across Georgia. State leaders including Gov. Brian Kemp, the Georgia Emergency Management Agency and other state agencies, members of the Georgia Public Service Commission, as well as members of the Georgia legislature and its leadership, alongside local county commissioners, mayors, first responders, law enforcement and countless others, were all on the ground with us and continue to be incredible partners as we rebuild our infrastructure.

As so many of our customers and neighbors try and return to some semblance of “normal,” Georgia Power will be here to help. From working directly with customers to suspend disconnections and waive late fees, to quickly getting funding directly to local organizations serving our state’s most impacted communities, we’re committed to being “A Citizen Wherever We Serve.”

While I felt disbelief at the devastation I saw, I am inspired by the kindness, resilience and fighting spirit exhibited by our employees and neighbors. From handwritten cards and signs with words of encouragement for lineworkers posted at the areas around our staging sites, to communities coming together to share essential resources like food and water, to local leaders going above and beyond to coordinate aid, the worst of Helene brought out the best in us.

For your kindness, compassion and patience, thank you to our Georgia Power customers, communities, employees and partners. More than ever, I am proud to be a Georgian, proud to be a part of this team and grateful to be a part of this community.

Our road to recovery may be long, but we are here for Georgia, and we are here for you!