Georgia was once at the head of the class when it came to the number of manufacturing jobs in the state. But new numbers show that’s no longer the case.

Every state in the nation lost manufacturing jobs from May 2007 to May of this year, but Georgia was among the worst. The Peach State lost 78,000 manufacturing jobs in that five-year period, making it one of the ten biggest losers.

“That did happen, no doubt about it. Georgia had a very large manufacturing base and a big part of that was textiles, which were directly related to construction,” said Labor Commissioner Mark Baker (R).

When the bottom fell out of the construction industry, it took much of the state’s manufacturing with it, he explained.

But Butler pointed to what he called a silver lining in the precipitous drop shown in the study conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Manufacturing jobs in Georgia have been on the rise since October 2010.