An investment by AT&T could help create Atlanta customer service jobs.

AT&T has announced its plan to invest $17 billion into the company and create 3,000 jobs this year. Of the jobs, 2,000 will be new positions in customer service and applications development, while the other 1,000 jobs are overseas contracting jobs that will be brought back to America.

According to an article by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the company has not said how many of the new jobs will be located in Atlanta. AT&T’s headquarters is in Dallas, Texas, but AT&T Mobility and U-verse are based in Atlanta. The company is expanding to help support increased growth of its wireless, broadband and video service areas.

Of the $17 billion, about two-thirds will go toward enhancing the company’s wireless and wired broadband networks. AT&T also recently announced its plan to cut 12,000 jobs, or 4 percent of the company’s total workforce. The company employs about 20,000 workers in Atlanta.

Atlanta could benefit if some of the new jobs created by AT&T are in the city. The Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta area’s unemployment rate increased from 6.9 percent to 7.6 percent during December 2008.

The area had a total non-farm employment of 2,341,200 workers during January, according to the United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is down from 2,381,300 workers during December 2008 and a 3.8 percent decrease from last year.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 1:10 pm and is filed under jobs, Customer Service. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.