Georgians getting back to work

It has been eight and a half years since the percentage of Georgia’s work force that was without work was this low. That was December 2007, as business writer Tony Adams reported Wednesday, and although most of us were blissfully ignorant of it at the time, the Great Recession had just begun. It would continue officially until June 2009, with economic aftershocks some of which continue to this day. Georgia was hit especially hard.

So it’s encouraging to learn that the state’s June unemployment rate ebbed to the 5.1 percent mark of late 2007, a figure very close to what most economists have traditionally considered full employment given constant changes in workplaces and the work force.

“In June, our employers created 11,400 jobs, hired more people and laid off fewer workers. In addition, our labor force continues to grow,” said Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler.

There are other good numbers and good trends behind the headline figure. One of the major factors in the recession was the housing market collapse, especially devastating in Georgia. Yet Butler said that over the last year “construction jobs grew by 7.3 percent, making it our fastest growing job sector.”

The overall jobless rate has declined significantly from 5.8 percent this time last year, and June’s initial unemployment claims were 10 percent lower than in May, and 16.3 percent lower than in June of last year. There’s no downside in any of that, for anybody.

Grim prognosis

Statistics from the Kaiser Family Foundation indicate that Georgia has about only 60 percent of the primary care doctors it needs. And according to a recent report by Georgia Public Broadcasting, it could get worse.

WABE radio in Atlanta this week cited an Association of American Medical Colleges report that predicts a nationwide shortage of 95,000 physicians in the next decade. In Georgia it could get much worse, and much sooner: The AAMC report predicts the nation’s lowest per capita physician population in Georgia by 2020 unless there are more medical education programs and opportunities.

The good news, relatively speaking, is that the General Assembly began studying the issue two years ago, and recommended more residency positions and medical school loan forgiveness programs.

That’s a good start, Dr. Barbara Ross-Lee told GPB, "but to just increase them in the ways we always have in the past won’t solve the problem." Ross-Lee is working to address the same problem in Arkansas, where she is a dean at a new medical school affiliated with the New York Institute of Technology. Given the higher percentage of medical school graduates who become specialists than primary care physicians, Georgia needs a plan geared specifically toward the kinds of health professionals it needs: “Primary Care is the fundamental base of a healthy population and health care system,” Ross-Lee told WABE.

This is a health care crisis that should transcend any divisions that loaded phrase too often and too easily provokes.

This story was originally published July 21, 2016 at 5:37 PM with the headline "Georgians getting back to work."