ATLANTA – First-time unemployment claims in Georgia declined by 9,274 last week to 44,892, the state Department of Labor reported Thursday.
The agency also announced Georgians have received more than $15 billion in unemployment benefits since coronavirus took hold in Georgia last March, more than during the last 27 years combined.
“Over 1.4 million Georgians have received benefits during the past seven months,” state Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler said Thursday. “Many are beginning to return to the workplace or are looking for new career opportunities.”
Those who haven’t gone back to work are facing a looming loss of unemployment benefits. Due to federal guidelines, the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program is limited to 39 weeks.
Claimants who began receiving benefits at the beginning of the program last February will begin to exhaust benefits in the next few weeks.
Since mid-March, the job sector accounting for the most initial unemployment claims in Georgia is accommodations and food services with 941,356 claims. The health care and social assistance job sector is next with 452,617 claims, followed by retail trade with 416,131.
The labor department offers online resources for finding a job, building a resume, and assisting with other reemployment needs. Employment opportunities include human resource specialists, restaurant managers, bookkeepers, 911 operators and licensed practical nurses.
The agency’s Business Services Unit is now centralizing its efforts to market virtual job fairs, customized recruitment, and other reemployment services, Butler said.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s deep-water ports are recovering quickly after taking some hits during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, the head of the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) said Thursday.
The number of twenty-foot equivalent container units (TEUs) the Port of Savannah handled during the last fiscal year fell from 4.5 million to 4.4 million, largely due to the pandemic’s impact on business last spring, Griff Lynch, the authority’s executive director, said during his annual State of the Port address.
But by last month, business at Savannah was picking back up to the point that the port set a monthly record by moving 412,148 TEUs, an increase of 11.4% over the previous September.
To the south at the Port of Brunswick, roll/on, roll/off cargo – primarily autos – were up 1% during the first quarter of this year after declining by 8% during fiscal 2020.
“We’re actually breaking records in a pandemic,” Lynch said.
Lynch used the annual speech in Savannah – delivered online for the first time – to announce several new projects in and around the Port of Savannah and update ongoing improvements.
New projects include a 1.2- million-square-foot facility in Bryan County to be built by medical goods provider Medline Industries. Construction is expected to be completed late next year, with FedEx leasing 415,000 square feet to provide e-commerce capabilities.
Another 800,000-square-foot distribution center to handle e-commerce will be built in Liberty County, Lynch said.
At the Port of Savannah itself, plans call for straightening Berth 1 at the Garden City Terminal to expand its capacity to dock four 15,000-TEU container ships and three additional vessels simultaneously. The project will take approximately two years.
While the Berth 1 work is in progress, smaller container ships will use the port’s Ocean Terminal. Retrofitting the terminal to accommodate the container ships already is underway and should be finished by the end of this year, Lynch said.
Meanwhile, the deepening of Savannah Harbor to accommodate the new generation of giant container ships is 75% complete and due to be finished by the end of next year. The long-anticipated project has been accomplished in fits and starts over two decades due to the difficulties Georgia’s congressional delegation has faced getting enough federal funding for the work.
Also making good progress is the port’s Mason Mega Rail project, which will connect the Port of Savannah with cities in the Mid-South and Midwest. Rail cargo, which now accounts for 18% to 20% of lifts at Savannah, is expected to increase to 25% to 27% within five years.
Lynch also announced that another rail facility several hundred miles from Savannah soon will be expanded. The Appalachian Regional Port near Chatsworth in Northwest Georgia, which opened two years ago primarily to move exports by rail to Savannah, soon will build a new facility that will expand its cargo capacity by 28,000 TEUs.
“We never expected it be as successful as it is,” Lynch said.
Further into the future, the port that has become the busiest in the nation for containerized cargo exports is planning to build a new terminal on Hutchinson Island on land the port authority already owns. The new terminal will let the authority add three new berths, increasing the Port of Savannah’s capacity by 3 million TEUs per year, Lynch said.
“We’re making strategic expansions to ensure cargo fluidity as Savannah’s container trade increases,” said Will McKnight, the authority’s board chairman. “Our long-term infrastructure investments ensure GPA is ready when our customers are ready to grow.”
Coin-operated machine supporters pressed state lawmakers Thursday to see the virtues of a new option to award gift cards as winnings instead of just lottery tickets, gasoline and in-store merchandise in Georgia convenience stores.
Store owners who contract with vendors to host the gaming machines are not allowed by law to reimburse winning players with cash, though industry representatives have acknowledged some stores and vendors flout that rule.
Gift cards pose a good option for players to collect on their winnings that would also drive up sales-tax revenues via purchases in places like gas stations or Walmart where the cards could be transacted, said Les Schneider, an attorney and lobbyist for the Georgia Amusement and Music Operators Association.
“The lottery gift card is something that is going to clear up a great number of problems,” Schneider said.
The lottery corporation has recently begun a pilot program to test out the gift card option in convenience stores, of which attorney David Jaffer said there are more than 6,600 in Georgia.
In all, convenience stores drum up more than $35 billion in sales annually and have faced stricter regulation of coin-operated machines since the lottery assumed oversight from the state Department of Revenue in 2013, said Jaffer, who represents convenience stores.
And though speakers at Thursday’s meeting disagreed on how best to tweak the rules for machines, there was consensus the gift cards potentially could spur even more revenues than the $91 million coin-operated machines raised last fiscal year for the HOPE scholarship and pre-kindergarten programs, which the lottery helps fund.
“We believe the [gift card] pilot will prove to be successful, and initiating the gift card will do more to clean up this industry than any of the other ideas we’ve seen or heard presented over the last few years,” said Angela Holland, president of the Georgia Association of Convenience Stores.
Lawmakers on the committee are tasked with drafting recommendations by December.
ATLANTA – A Tifton business leader will lead the state’s efforts to attract more businesses to rural Georgia and expand those already there.
Gov. Brian Kemp Wednesday announced Tift County Development Authority President and CEO Brian Marlowe will join the state Department of Economic Development as deputy commissioner for rural Georgia.
In that role, Marlowe will head the Rural Strike Team, a group of economic development officials Kemp formed last year to spearhead job creation in rural parts of the state.
“Rural Georgia is ripe for investment,” the governor said. “We believe we can land big projects in rural communities across our state.”
Kemp pledged to make rural economic development a priority when he ran for governor two years ago. The Rural Strike Team aims to do that by tapping into expertise provided by Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College’s Rural Prosperity Center, the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia and the House Rural Development Council formed by Georgia House Speaker David Ralston.
The strike team’s specific charge is to promote and market industrial sites in rural communities large enough to house projects that will benefit multiple counties.
“With more than 20 years spent working in rural economic development, Brian’s track record of locating new projects in his community, expanding existing industries, and generating opportunity in South Georgia speaks for itself,” Kemp said Wednesday. “I have every confidence that by working with leaders in the General Assembly, the business community, our universities and technical colleges, state agencies, local developers, and the world-class team at [the Department of Economic Development], Brian will help us move the needle for rural Georgia.”
Besides the development authority position, Marlowe also serves as president and CEO of the Tift County Chamber of Commerce. He also was a member of Kemp’s transition team following the 2018 gubernatorial election.
The line stretched around the block at South Cobb Regional Library in Mableton where voters waited in line for hours to cast ballots on the first day of early voting in the Nov. 3 general election on Oct. 12, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Georgians are turning out to vote in record-breaking numbers both by mail and at local polling places during the early voting period less than two weeks before the Nov. 3 election.
As of noon Wednesday, nearly 2 million people had voted in the hotly anticipated election that features a presidential contest, both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats, congressional, state and local offices all on the ballot.
Of those, more than 1.2 million had cast ballots in person during the three-week early voting period that started last Monday, marking a roughly 60% increase in the number of early voters compared to the same point in the 2016 election.
And to date, around 783,000 voters have cast absentee ballots amid the COVID-19 pandemic that has prompted many Georgians to avoid the lines and virus transmission risks involved in heading to the polls. By this time in the 2016 election, roughly 103,000 mail-in ballots had been cast.
“Notwithstanding the pandemic, voters in the Peach State can take advantage of no-excuse absentee ballot voting by mail or through a secure drop box, three weeks of early in-person voting or Election Day voting,” said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
With turnout still climbing, state and county election officials expect even more people to cast ballots next week in the days leading up to the election. Raffensperger said earlier this week turnout could top 2.5 million for early voting, with another 2 million voting on Election Day.
Georgia voters have already contended with hours-long waits in line outside many polling places since early voting began last week. Officials have urged voters to take advantage of an online portal to request absentee ballots and to mail them back as soon as possible.
As of Monday, Raffensperger said more than 1.6 million absentee ballots had been requested.
