Nearly half a million Georgians are without jobs. The state’s unemployment rate is about 10 percent, essentially unchanged from a year ago. One expert says, there are simply no jobs for four out of five people looking for work.

The state’s unemployed pool is double what it was during the last recession.

And about 250,000 state residents have been out of work for at least seven months.

Clare Richie is with the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. She says with sluggish job growth so far this year, Georgia won’t be out of the woods anytime soon.

“We need to create more than half a million jobs to get back to where we were before the recession hit," Richie said. "And in the last five months, Georgia has only added 22,000 jobs. At this rate, it will take us 10 years to create the jobs we need.”

Richie says the state needs to invest more in job retraining.

State labor officials say the job climate in Georgia is slowly improving. For example, the number of long-term unemployed has declined by 12,000 people since January.

Labor commissioner Mark Butler says while job growth will be sluggish this summer, Georgia’s outlook is improving.

Nonetheless, he says certain types of jobs have likely left Georgia forever. And workers in those industries need to retrain for different careers.

“With some of the long-term unemployment, I think it’s going to depend on the individuals and what their plan has been over this time period," Butler said. "Hopefully some of those have been correcting some of the deficiencies in their skills, especially if they worked in an area like, say, if they worked in one of the carpet mills in Northwest Georgia that are no longer operating.”

He said he’s encouraged to see some hiring in the construction industry, which will likely have ripple effects in the many sectors that supply equipment and services to the industry.

One economist says the last recession was markedly different from past downturns, and that's challenging traditional notions about unemployment.

Rajeev Dhawan is an economist at Georgia State University. He says past recessions lasted about nine months, and laid-off workers could find new jobs if they waited. But the most recent recession lasted two years. Construction, banking and municipal employment still haven’t picked up. That leaves workers with some hard choices.