Last week, I reported the labor force was down 500 people in the local area. Unfortunately, I was not specific about the “local” bit.
I was referring to the Augusta Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), while the headline referenced the Central Savannah River Area (CSRA). These are not the same with the MSA including Burke, Columbia, Lincoln, McDuffie, and Richmond counties in Georgia and Aiken and Edgefield counties in South Carolina. The CSRA is a 13-county region, entirely within Georgia as seen in the map below (source: csrarc.ga.gov).
The CSRA does have some economic statistics available from the Georgia Department of Labor (GDOL). The total labor force in August was 207,231, down 1,345 from July. The corresponding numbers for the MSA were 264,629 and down 1,253.
This fall in the labor force is different from the number I reported last week because the GDOL does not seasonally adjust raw numbers. The current unemployment rate in the CSRA is 3.8 percent, slightly higher than the 3.5 percent (not seasonally adjusted) in the MSA. Employment fell 1,456, or 0.7 percent, in the CSRA and 1,399, or 0.5 percent in the MSA.
Overall, the economic variables for the CSRA declined more than in the MSA, indicating the rural counties performing worse than the metro counties over the last month.
