Companies amass cash reserves

in general, companies big and small are likely to continue saving money for a rainy day, rather than investing it in expansions or paying it to shareholders because they face uncertainty in so many quarters.

“Corporations want a margin of safety to deal with potentially bad outcomes,” said Adrian Cronje, chief investment officer at Atlanta investment advisory firm Balentine LLC.

Nationally, cash reserves now equal 5 percent of corporations’ assets — their highest level since 1961, he said. The typical level is about 3.8 percent.

Others say companies are sitting on more cash because economic demand is weak and they don’t see enough profitable projects to invest in.

“They’re building up the cash because they don’t need it for investment,” said Dean Baker, an economist and co-director of the Center for Economic Policy Research in Washington, D.C. Companies could spend more money on acquisitions or bigger dividends, but most likely “they’ll keep sitting on it,” he said, until customer demand for their products gets considerably stronger.

Either way, the situation translates into a continued weak job market, with Georgia’s unemployment rate at a relatively high 9.3 percent. Nationally, the U.S. economy add-

Delta Air Lines

Aflac

Southern Co.

Genuine Parts

First Data

SunTrust Banks

AGCO

Coca-Cola Enterprises

Newell Rubbermaid

Mohawk Industries

NCR Corp.

Rock-Tenn ed just 96,000 jobs in August, well below the 125,000 level economists had been predicting, and down from 141,000 in July. Unemployment fell at the same time to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent in July, but economists said that was due largely to people giving up the job hunt.

About 395,000 people left the job market, more than offsetting last month’s weak job growth, said Don Sabbarese, director of the Econometric Cen- ter at Kennesaw State University’s Coles College of Business. Even though the U.S. economy has been recovering since 2009, employers still aren’t adding enough new jobs to keep pace with the number of new people entering the job market, he said.

“We’ve got 125,000 new people coming into the job market every month,” he said. “It’s a tough situation.”

And like the gloomy jobs picture, companies are also see-