About a half a million Georgians are unemployed, so state leaders want to organize a job summit to get them back to work.

Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond says it’s time to get the brightest minds in the state to come together and make a job creation action plan.

So, he’s meeting with the Georgia Public Policy Foundation Monday to hammer out the details of a jobs summit.

Thurmond says it’s not the big businesses that will lead the way out of the recession.

“We need to focus our attention on helping small and medium size businesses stimulate hiring.”

Thurmond says state leaders also need to look at how to reeducate and retrain people out of work.

He says the biggest challenge will be the few new dollars the state will have to invest in the initiative because of declining revenues.

Organizers says they’re targeting early January for the summit.

Tags: unemployment, Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond, jobs summit