ATLANTA – Georgia’s unemployment rate is holding steady despite persistent inflation.
Joblessness in the Peach State stood at 3.1% last month for the seventh month in a row and was half a percentage point lower than the national unemployment rate of 3.6%. Georgia had the highest labor force participation rate in the Southeast at 61%.
“It is clear that Georgia means business,” state Commissioner of Labor Bruce Thompson said of the latest numbers. “Due to sustained investments in the state’s economy and talented workforce, Georgia remains a top destination to live, work, and raise a family.”
The number of jobs in Georgia rose by 3,200 in February to nearly 4.8 million, an all-time high. Job sectors reporting all-time highs included private education and health services at 648,900 jobs, and leisure and hospitality at 510,900.
Leisure and hospitality was among the hardest hit job sectors during the pandemic, losing 222,300 jobs. But last month, it became the last private sector group to regain all jobs lost during the economic shutdown following the outbreak of COVID-19.
Georgia’s labor force also increased in February for the fifth straight month to nearly 5.1 million. However, the number of unemployed Georgians rose last month to 162,981.
First-time unemployment claims declined last month from January by 45% to 23,055. However, initial jobless claims were up 4% from February of last year.
More than 120,000 job openings in Georgia were listed online at Employ Georgia in February. Industries with the most openings included accommodation and food services with 18,000, retail trade with 8,600, and manufacturing with 7,800.
ATLANTA – The state Senate passed compromise legislation Thursday that would raise legal weight limits on trucks in Georgia carrying certain types of cargo in certain areas of the state.
The bill, which originated in the Georgia House of Representatives, cleared the Senate 44-5 after the Senate Transportation Committee had reduced the scope of the measure.
The version of the legislation that passed the House early this month would let commercial trucks exceed the current legal weight limit of 80,000 pounds by 10%, for a total of 88,000 pounds, on roads other than interstate highways, which are subject to federal restrictions.
The bill as originally proposed was scaled back before it even got to the Senate. As introduced, it would have applied to all commercial trucks no matter what they were hauling. The House changed it to allow the additional weight only for trucks carrying logs, agricultural products and livestock, granite, concrete or solid waste.
The Senate then reduced the bill’s scope further by removing granite, concrete, and solid waste from the types of cargo eligible for hauling at 88,000 pounds.
Other Senate changes restrict the weight exemption to trucks hauling loads within 75 miles of the cargo’s point of origin and prohibit trucks above the 80,000-pound weight limit in metro Atlanta.
Georgia farmers and loggers have told lawmakers they need heavier trucks to reduce the number of loads they have to haul.
The agriculture and timber industries have used an executive order Gov. Brian Kemp signed in the early days of the pandemic three years ago allowing heavier trucks to help them stay in business. However, the executive order expired last week.
“I consider this bill to be a lifeline to the people I represent who provide food and fiber to the citizens of Georgia,” Senate Agriculture and Consumer Affairs Committee Chairman Russ Goodman, R-Cogdell, told his Senate colleagues Thursday.
While farmers and loggers have pushed for the bill, representatives of local governments, traffic safety advocates, and the Georgia Department of Transportation have argued a permanent exemption allowing heavier trucks would damage roads and bridges and cause more severe crashes.
“Putting grotesquely overweight trucks on the road is dangerous for all of us,” said Sen. Frank Ginn, R-Danielsville, who held management positions in several local governments before being elected to the Senate in 2010. “Not only does it destroy roads. It kills people.”
Because of the changes the Senate made to the bill, it now must return to the House. It may take a joint legislative conference committee to work out the two chambers’ differences on the legislation before the General Assembly adjourns for the year next week.
ATLANTA – Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law a controversial bill Thursday banning most gender-affirming care for transgender Georgians under 18.
Kemp wasted little time in signing the bill, which received final passage from the General Assembly just two days earlier.
Senate Bill 140 will ban Georgia transgender youths from receiving hormone replacement therapy and gender-affirming surgery.
Hospitals could lose their permits and doctors their licenses. The legislation also opens up doctors to civil and criminal liability for providing such services.
The new law does allow transgender youths to take puberty blockers. It also provides exceptions for youths with certain medical conditions who need hormone replacement therapy and gender-affirming surgeries.
Kemp and other Republican supporters framed the law as a measure to protect children from irreversible physical changes.
“As Georgians, parents, and elected leaders, it is our highest responsibility to safeguard the bright, promising futures of our kids – and SB 140 takes an important step in fulfilling that mission,” Kemp said Thursday in a statement on Twitter.
“I appreciate the many hours of respectful debate and deliberation by members of the General Assembly that resulted in the final passage of this bill.”
The legislation drew fierce criticism from legislative Democrats, parents of transgender youth, and major medical societies who argued it would harm vulnerable transgender youths’ mental health. They also maintained it violates parents’ rights to make decisions about their children’s care and prevents doctors from following medically accepted standards of care.
“This really is about us bullying children in order to score political points,” said Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, while speaking against the bill on the Senate floor earlier this week. “It does not protect children…”
The law is slated to take effect on July 1, 2023. Advocates for transgender youth have vowed to fight it.
“Courts around the country have already stopped similar laws from going into effect on constitutional grounds, and we expect Georgia courts would do the same,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia said in a statement released this week. The group plans to sue the state.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Rep. Todd Jones, R-South Forsyth, sponsored a bill in the House that would prohibit government agencies from requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination to access government facilities or services.
ATLANTA – The state House of Representatives gave final passage Thursday to legislation that would prohibit government agencies from requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination to access government facilities or services.
Last year, the General Assembly enacted a measure barring the use of a person’s COVID vaccine status to prevent access to government facilities, services or licenses. The law included an automatic repeal date of June 30, 2023.
The bill passed Thursday removes the repeal date, making the provision a permanent part of Georgia law. The bill passed the Republican-controlled chamber by a 99-69 nearly party line vote.
Senate Bill 1 continues a long debate about what role COVID vaccinations should play in public life in Georgia after they first began to be administered in December 2020.
“SB 1 is a simple bill. It extends in perpetuity the current law as it relates to the COVID-19 vaccination status by removing the sunset clause,” said Rep. Todd Jones, R-South Forsyth.
“The current law prevents government and all of its subdivisions, agencies and authorities from discriminating against citizens and denying services based on COVID vaccination status. I believe in [Georgians’] freedom and their liberty. I expect them to take all proper precautions just like they did before 2020.”
House Democrats opposed the measure, arguing the bill politicizes what should be a public health matter and expressing concerns about how it limits local control.
“This bill aims to eliminate the ability for government agencies, including public schools, to require COVID vaccination ‘as a condition of providing any service or access to any facility’,” said Rep. Michelle Au, D-Johns Creek. “The harms posed by bills like this are not abstract. … Bills like this tie our hands with respect to the response we can provide.”
“I thought local control was a huge thing,” added Rep. Shelly Hutchinson, D-Snellville. “When does local control matter?”
The Georgia chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics opposes the measure, according to a letter the organization’s leaders sent to the Senate Health and Human Services Committee last month.
“Permanently prohibiting schools from requiring vaccination could severely hinder our ability to combat the pandemic,” states the letter, which is signed by the group’s president, Dr. Angela Highbaugh-Battle, and legislative chairwoman Dr. Melinda Willingham.
“A permanent ban sets a dangerous precedent which may lead to erosion of the current vaccine requirements for school attendance for other diseases.”
Georgia has had 2.4 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and 35,153 deaths, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health. Only 59% of Georgians are fully vaccinated with both COVID vaccine doses.
The bill now moves to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for his signature.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The Georgia Senate overwhelmingly passed a $32.4 billion fiscal 2024 state budget Thursday that includes $2,000 pay raises for teachers and most state employees and $6,000 increases for state law enforcement officers.
The Senate spending plan, which passed 51-1, leans more heavily toward the budget recommendations Gov. Brian Kemp submitted to the General Assembly in January than the version of the budget the Georgia House of Representatives passed two weeks ago.
Senators restored a $106 million cut the House had made to Georgia’s Medicaid program with funds taken from the University System of Georgia.
The Senate is requesting the system’s Board of Regents to replace that money with carry-over funds from previous budgets. The university system has $504 million in carry-over funds, said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, citing a financial report released last fall.
The Senate also reverted to Kemp’s proposal to fully fund Georgia’s HOPE Scholarships program for the first time since the Great Recession. The House budget calls for funding 95% of tuition coverage for most HOPE scholars, reserving 100% only for students with high school grade-point averages of 3.5 or higher.
Tillery said the money for the $6,000 raises would come by reducing funding of state trooper schools.
“There is a learning curve as people exit training school,” he said. “If we can hang on and keep our already trained staff, there’s a savings long term.”
The Senate budget adds $40 million to the governor’s budget plan to address mental health staffing and facility needs.
Senators agreed with the House version of the budget to fund a one-time benefit of $500 for state retirees at a cost of $26.7 million.
As is customary, senators added some capital projects to the budget’s $600 million bond package. The list includes $7 million for construction of a military science building on the Dahlonega campus of the University of North Georgia; $6 million to design and construct a dental school building at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro; $6 million to expand the Hugh M. Gillis Medical Building at Southeastern Technical College in Vidalia; and $4 million to renovate and expand the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s medical examiner office in Bibb County.
House and Senate negotiators next will form a joint conference committee to negotiate a final version of the budget before lawmakers adjourn the 2023 session next week.
