Officials’ theories on decline of NW Georgia labor force vary
♦ The total is more than 5,000 fewer than a decade ago.
Workforce development is always at the top of the list of objectives for local economic developers, but what happens when the workforce falls dramatically, as it has in Rome over the course of the last decade?
The Georgia Department of Labor reported last week that in July, the labor force in Floyd County numbered 45,356. That is down from 51,629 in July a decade ago. It’s also down slightly from 45,654 in July of 1998.
The numbers could well be reflective of the booming economy in the first decade of the new millennium, leading up to the bust at the end of the first decade.
“Obviously the recession took a big toll,” said Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler. “Folks outside of Atlanta have taken longer to recover.”
The decline in the labor force could also be the result of an aging population.
“A lot of people put off their retirement for many years because of the recession, then they all started to dump out of the labor force at the same time,” Butler said. The U.S. Census Bureau reported in its latest data sheet in July of 2017, that 16.6 percent of the Floyd County population was 65 years of age or older.
Retired Georgia Highlands College Professor of Economics Bruce Jones said the state of Georgia as a whole is growing but most of that growth has occurred in the metropolitan Atlanta region.
“We’re doing better than we were a few years ago, but the numbers show we’re not back to where we were a decade ago,” Jones said. “We’re just not growing and not setting any kind of records for people who are employed.”
Rome-Floyd Chamber Economic Development Director Heather Seckman offered a different theory. She said that some of the difference in numbers is the result of the way the Department of Labor had categorized employees of Mohawk Industries, attributing a lot of jobs across the entire regional Mohawk network of plants solely to Floyd County.
The Labor office in Atlanta also reports that the number of Floyd County residents who were employed somewhere in Georgia, not just in Floyd County, was riding the same wave and is actually down in July of this year as compared to July of 1998. Two decades ago, 43,431 Floyd residents were on a payroll, 10 years ago that number boomed to 48,009 but last month it had dropped to 43,245.
Butler said the 15-county Northwest Georgia region set a record in July for the number of people who were employed, 410,734. That number has grown by more than 13,400 in the past year alone.
The 15-county region includes Floyd, Bartow, Gordon, Polk, Walker, Chattooga, Dade, Catoosa, Whitfield, Murray, Fannin, Gilmer, Pickens, Paulding and Haralson counties.