Regional Snapshot: Metro Atlanta Workforce-Industries in Demand & Opportunity Occupations

Our regional and state economies are doing well, by most all measures, despite some recent dips in the stock market. This month’s Regional Snapshot digs into some nuances of “doing well” by taking a look at the status of and differences among a few measures of unemployment and underemployment. It then moves on to assess recent trends in workforce demand and workforce availability in key industry clusters and occupations—because making the workers available to meet industry demand is critical to ensuring that our economies will continue to “do well”.

Highlights from this snapshot:

In looking at a more comprehensive and expansive definition of unemployment (the so-called “U-6” measure), Georgia’s unemployment rate (the U-6 definition) is 8.3%, which is slightly higher than the nation’s 8.1%.
Out of the 50 largest metro areas, metro Atlanta has the 7th highest underemployment rate, (only Grand Rapids, Raleigh, New York, Charlotte, Nashville, and Orlando were higher). Here we are using the New York FED’s measure of underemployment
Throughout Georgia, the counties with the highest underemployment rates tend to be located in metro areas, which suggests that these metro areas attract/retain those with college degrees.
Registered Nurses will remain a hard-to-fill occupation as it is projected to have the largest occupation gap over the next 10 year, according to JobsEQ.
The 2016 Metro Atlanta Regional Workforce Plan identified three targeted in-demand industry clusters in the 10-county region: Healthcare, Information Technology and Transportation & Logistics.