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ATLANTA (AP) -- The Georgia Department of Labor says the state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate declined slightly last month.

State Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said Thursday that the rate fell to 10.2 percent in February, down one-tenth of a percentage point from a revised 10.3 percent in January. Georgia's jobless rate was also 10.3 percent in February 2010. Butler says there were 3,795,400 payroll jobs in Georgia in February, an increase of seven-tenths of a percent.

He says that figure gives him reason to be cautiously optimistic, along with a reduction in the number of new layoffs. Butler says the growing number of long term unemployed is troubling. The long term unemployed, those who have been out of
work for 27 weeks or more, now represent 55 percent of the unemployed in Georgia.

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