ATLANTA – Georgia’s unemployment rate rose slightly last month to 3.2% after holding steady at 3.1% for the previous nine months, the state Department of Labor reported Thursday.
Still, the Peach State’s jobless rate in May was half a percentage point lower than the national unemployment rate of 3.7%
“Despite a slight uptick in Georgia’s unemployment rate, claims were down over the month with jobs hitting another all-time high,” state Commissioner of Labor Bruce Thompson said. “While it is too early to tell if we are on the verge of an economic correction, my administration will closely monitor our state’s unemployment numbers for any emerging trends.”
The number of jobs was up by 14,000 last month to an all-time high of 4.9 million. Job sectors setting records included the 661,800 Georgians working in private education and health services, the leisure and hospitality sector with 521,100 jobs, and financial activities with 281,600 jobs.
First-time unemployment claims fell by 6% from April to 24,002 in May. However, initial claims over the year were up by 43% over May of 2022.
More than 122,000 job listings were online for Georgians to access. The top five occupations for job listings were health care with 23,500 jobs listed, sales with 14,000 jobs, business management and operations with 12,500 jobs, and the hospitality, food and tourism sector with 11,500.
ATLANTA – Maintaining a reliable Georgia film tax credit is essential to continuing the success story the state’s film industry has built, an administrator with the Georgia Department of Economic Development said Wednesday.
Andrew Capezzuto, the agency’s general counsel, put up a robust defense of the state’s film tax credit during the opening hearing of a new joint legislative panel formed to review all of Georgia’s income tax credits and sales tax exemptions. The goal is to determine which are bringing state taxpayers a healthy return on their investment and which might need to be reformed or repealed.
Georgia’s film industry has exploded from $135 million in direct economic impact in fiscal 2007, the year before the General Assembly adopted the nation’s richest film tax credit, to $4.4 billion last year, Capezzuto told members of the Joint Tax Review Panel.
The Peach State now boasts more than 6 million square feet of film stages, up from fewer than 50,000 square feet before the tax credit was enacted and second in the U.S. only to California, he said.
Capezzuto said much of that activity is taking place outside of metro Atlanta, including studio projects in Savannah, Columbus, and Athens. Nearly 1,000 film productions have been staged outside of the metro region since 2007, he said.
With the film tax credit accounting for about $1 billion in lost state tax revenue each year, lawmakers have put in guardrails aimed at ensuring accountability. Legislation the General Assembly enacted in 2020 requires all film productions located in Georgia to undergo mandatory audits.
It also tightens rules governing how film companies transfer or sell unused tax credits to other businesses, a common practice for production groups that conduct part of their movie-making work outside Georgia.
“We don’t just give away tax incentives without getting something in return,” Capezzuto said.
Jeffrey Dorfman, the state’s chief economist, injected a note of caution that was aimed at the state’s tax incentives in general but seemed to apply particularly to the film tax credit.
Dorfman suggested tax credits be used sparingly to jump-start targeted industries. Once established, industries may not need tax credits going forward, he said.
“Once you have built a position of leadership, you can reduce the incentives,” he said.
But Capezzuto cautioned against making significant changes to the film tax credit.
“To be able to rely on incentives that are predictable is very important for us to remain competitive,” he said.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, a member of the review committee, said he’s looking to the panel to “clean up” rather than eliminate tax credits or exemptions.
“I don’t think anybody’s out to end a certain credit,” he said.
After taking July off, the review panel will begin meeting once a month in August. It is due to recommend any potential changes to the state’s tax incentives in time for the 2024 legislative session starting in January.
ATLANTA – The state of Georgia will take $671 million in bonds for capital projects to the market later this month armed with the highest rating from each of the three main credit rating agencies.
Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Globing Ratings gave Georgia a score of AAA, while FitchRatings scored the Peach State bonds at Aaa.
“These ratings enable us to save taxpayers millions of dollars each year with low interest rates for borrowing, and they highlight the strength of our workforce and stability of our state economy,” Gov. Brian Kemp said Wednesday.
The good news about Georgia’s bond rating comes despite three consecutive months of decreasing state tax revenues. Still, the state is expected to close out fiscal 2023 at the end of this month with a healthy budget surplus built up during the last several years.
“Georgia’s AAA Issuer Default Rating reflects the state’s proven willingness and ability to maintain fiscal balance and a broad-based, growth-oriented economy that supports solid revenue gains over time,” FitchRatings wrote in its analysis.
“The state is well positioned to deal with economic downturns with exceptionally strong gap-closing capacity due to is broad control of revenue and spending, coupled with prudent reserve-building practices.”
Most of the proceeds from the bonds will go toward K-12 schools, higher education, public safety, and economic development projects. The bonds will be sold on June 27.
ATLANTA – Congress should put guardrails around rapidly developing artificial intelligence technology to thwart criminal scammers inside the U.S. and rein in China’s use of AI to oppress dissidents, witnesses told a U.S. Senate subcommittee Tuesday.
Jennifer DeStefano of Scottsdale, Ariz., described the harrowing experience of getting a phone call from her daughter saying she had been kidnapped, only to discover later that her daughter was safe at home and she had been listening to an AI-generated “deepfake” of her daughter’s voice.
“I will never be able to shake that voice and the desperate cry for help from my mind,” DeStefano told the Senate Human Rights Subcommittee, chaired by Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga. “There’s no limit to the evil AI can bring. If left uncontrolled and unregulated, it will rewrite the concept of what is real and what is not.”
In DeStefano’s case, police were unable to prosecute because she discovered the scam before any ransom was paid to the fake kidnappers. Thus, no crime was committed.
“This conduct should be criminal and severely punished,” Ossoff said after DeStefano’s presentation.
Ossoff described the growth of artificial intelligence technology as an “existential threat” on multiple fronts. It can be used to invade Americans’ privacy, disrupt labor markets by replacing jobs now being done by humans, influence the future of warfare, destabilize politics, and threaten the nation’s cybersecurity, he said.
At the same time, AI promises to increase economic productivity, diagnose cancer, and produce life-saving drugs, Ossoff said.
“It is imperative that Congress understand the full range of risks and potential,” he said.
Geoffrey Cain, senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, a nonprofit that advocates using technology to promote freedom, said China is using AI to target protesters and ethnic minorities, including the Muslim Uyghurs of Western China. AI can be used to detect when someone anywhere in China unfurls a banner or when and where foreign journalists travel inside the country, Cain said.
“China can’t be trusted to help build guardrails for AI,” he said. “It will transform generative AI into a state tool for oppression.”
Cain suggested Congress stop American technologists from helping China develop its AI capabilities with legislation imposing prison time on those who do.
Alexandra Reeve Givens, CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology, said AI technology is also being used in this country to violate human rights. She said Florida and Maryland have used it to identify protestors, while a Georgia man was held in a local jail for days due to a false AI identification.
Givens said Congress should require AI companies to develop safety standards and fund efforts to develop technology that will detect deepfakes.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s decades-old certificate of need (CON) law governing hospitals and health-care services has never achieved its intended purpose and should be reformed or scrapped altogether, witnesses told a state Senate study committee Tuesday.
Congress passed the CON law in 1979 requiring applicants wishing to build a new hospital or provide new medical services to demonstrate a need in their community. But the federal law was repealed in 1986 because it wasn’t meeting its goal of reducing the costs of health care by avoiding duplication, Thomas Stratmann, a senior research fellow and economics professor at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, testified as the Senate Study Committee on Certificate of Need Reform opening hearings on the CON issue.
Since the federal repeal, 34 states – including Georgia – have chosen to continue enforcing state-level CON laws, while only 12 have fully repealed their CON laws. Four have reformed their CON requirements to exempt certain types of facilities, notably nursing homes.
“Keeping CON on the books has resulted in negative consequences for patients,” Stratmann said. “It reduces health-care quality, reduces access to health care, and reduces availability of medical equipment.”
The study committee was formed after legislation championed by Senate Republican leaders aimed at CON fizzled in the General Assembly this year. One of the bills called for exempting most rural hospitals from the law, while the other would have repealed CON entirely except for long-term care facilities.
Critics of Georgia’s CON law have long focused on its impact on rural counties. Stratmann’s research projects that an additional seven rural hospitals could be built in Georgia if the CON law were repealed. Ten rural hospitals have closed since 2005.
Repealing CON also would increase the number of ambulatory-surgery centers (ASCs) operating in Georgia from the current 316 to 500, according to Stratmann.
But Keri Conley, general counsel for the Georgia Hospital Association, questioned the accuracy of the seven additional hospitals projection because no Georgia-specific analysis was done to come up with the number.
Conley said more ASCs aren’t the answer to lack of access to health care in rural communities.
“ASCs are typically located near hospitals concentrated in metro areas,” she said.
Conley said ASCs can even work against rural health-care access because many are built in outer suburbs or exurbs, where they compete with existing rural hospitals.
But health-care lawyer Victor Moldovan said ASCs help bring down health-care costs because the outpatient care they provide saves money.
“The way to reduce costs is to push it outpatient,” he said. “We need to open up access and remove barriers.”
Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, the study committee’s chairman, said the panel will hold two additional hearings in Columbus and Savannah before returning to the Gold Dome for a final meeting. The committee is due to release recommendations to the full Senate by Dec. 1.
