About 1.9 million Americans had been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer in September, 27.1% of all unemployed people, BLS said. For job seekers, the figure is a reminder that a low-layoff market can still be a hard one to re-enter.
Metro Atlanta had 3,105,100 nonfarm payroll jobs in August, down 14,300 from a year earlier, BLS reported September 30. The 0.5% decline was not statistically significant, and the metro unemployment rate fell to 3.4% from 3.6%.
An IZA discussion paper using CPS data finds no statistically significant rise in summer 2026 unemployment among recent college graduates, though it reports some evidence linked to remote-capable occupations.
