DULUTH, Ga. — Membership growth, or the lack thereof, is a pressing issue most credit unions continue to grapple with.

Georgia's industry is no different, according to a new report from the Georgia Credit Union Affiliates' Membership Growth Initiatives Task Force. In 2006, Georgia's credit unions added just 23,000 members or 0.3% to its membership roll, which currently contains just over 1.7 million members–nearly the same figure for 2005.

The membership task force found that many credit unions were "clipping along" with 10-15% annual new member sign-up rates. Where that's the case, closed and purged accounts were "nearly as high." Despite the numbers, Georgia has a plentiful marketplace to cull new members with more than nine million citizens and almost four million in the civilian labor force. The peach state is also one of the fastest growing states in the country in terms of both population and economy, the task force noted.