State and national jobs numbers issued Thursday were a combination of bad news and not-as-bad news.

Georgia’s jobless rate jumped to 9.3 percent in February, up from a revised 8.5 percent the previous month, the state Labor Department said Thursday.

The state shed 189,800 jobs during the month, cutting the job base by 4.6 percent from February 2008, the agency said.

And yet, national jobless claims hinted at a possible bottom to the bad news: 646,000 laid-off people filed for unemployment benefits last week. That’s not good, but a month ago, that figure hit 670,000. It hasn’t fallen much, but it hasn’t returned to that peak.

Metro Atlanta accounted for the bulk of the state’s job losses, with the region’s payrolls shrinking by 111,300 jobs. On a percentage basis, the Dalton area in northwest Georgia saw the biggest decline in payrolls, losing 6,000 jobs, or 7.9 percent from a year ago.

I would like to take a moment to thank the asshats in Congress who keep voting for all the bailouts and other socialist economic plans and blindly following President Obama down that path for making this worse than it really had to be.

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