ATLANTA -- Metro Atlanta's unemployment rate declined to 8.3 percent in Februray.

That's down from 8.7 percent in January and well under the jobless rate of 9.3 percent from February a year ago.

Cobb County's unemployment rate was 7.4 percent in February.

The new numbers were released early Thursday by the Georgia Department of Labor.

Officials say the rate declined because the number of jobs increased and there were fewer new layoffs.

The number of jobs in metro Atlanta increased by 6,400, climbing to 2.37 million from 2.36 million in January.

Most of the growth was in professional and business services, and education and health care. Some seasonal jobs were lost in trade, transportation and warehousing.

The metro Atlanta unemployment data is not seasonally adjusted.

(WXIA) -- The Georgia Department of Education launched the Teachers Resource Link (TRL) on Tuesday, giving educators access to digital resources that go along with Georgia's K-12 curriculum.

Mat Cardoza of GaDOE Communications reported that the TRL was developed to help facilitate teachers when they look for digital materials for students to use, based on their academic performance. By using the TRL, the state can quickly find those resources the students need to excel in the classroom.

There are 18,000 digital resources currently that make up the TRL, based on Georgia standards for K-12 teachers, Cardoza said. Every teacher has the same information coming from the same knowledge base. 

State School Superintendent Dr. John Barge said, "These kinds of tools are invaluable because they save our teachers a tremendous amount of time and will ultimately help our students be college and career ready because they are getting the best instruction possible."

ATLANTA -- Have you been sniffling and coughing? How could it be allergies when it's been so cold outside? Some point to a medical phenomenon called "priming."

"That one is definitely birch, and it's a trigger." Outside the Atlanta Allergy and Asthma clinic in Marietta, Dr. Fineman points to allergy red flags. They're white and poofy.

Fineman says we're not headed for a record-breaking pollen season like the one that left Atlanta in a cloud of yellow dust last year. This spring should be more typical.

"The difference is this year we had very high pollen counts in January," he said.

Now a cold spell is hitting metro Atlanta, and the pollen counts go down. The count reported Sunday was only ten. When the weather warms, those numbers will rapidly increase. It creates the phenomenon called "priming."