This past friday, Governor Deal announced that State Farm, the largest insurance firm in Georgia, is expanding- leasing almost 400,000 square feet of office space at the 64 East Perimeter Center and 66 East Perimeter Center office buildings. State Farm anticipates hiring 500 employees for their new customer service/sales center.
This is great news for our city. The same day, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution featured a large screaming headline about Georgia ranking as the number one state for residential foreclosures. An easy headline to write, but the State Farm announcement is very important for many reasons. For the real estate industry this is one more major office space lease that takes a large available amount of contiguous office space off the Perimeter Center office market. The Atlanta economy will certainly benefit from these new jobs which will include clerical, technical and management positions.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that, "The financial, professional and business service industries account for about one-fifth of Atlanta’s 2.3 million jobs and have added roughly 11,000 positions during the last year."
The news from State Farm represents another large increase in professional sector jobs for Atlanta. “Obviously, three years into this economic recovery we still have a very soft labor market in Atlanta and nationwide,” said Roger Tutterow, an economics professor at Mercer University. “So we readily welcome 500 jobs in any capacity.”
This is the third time in the last 12 months that State Farm has expanded and announced new job creation. “This expansion is just another way State Farm continues to adjust to meet the changing needs and preferences of our customers," said State Farm Senior Vice President Tim McFadden. State Farm is currently ranked No. 43 on the Fortune 500 list of largest companies and has more than 65,000 employees.
The State farm customer service center is expected to open in the Fourth Quarter of 2012.
