News
NC unemployment rate hits record low. These 5 counties have the highest rates:
According to the latest report from the N.C. Department of Commerce, North Carolina has a 3.3% unemployment rate, the lowest in decades.
News
Mixed employment picture in N.C. draws concern for the future
Nearly 60,000 North Carolinians never re-entered the labor force after the Covid shutdowns.
Opinion
Worker shortage won’t end soon
North Carolina’s labor-force participation rate was 59.3% in November. Two years ago, in November 2019, that rate was 61.5%.
Opinion
Labor force shouldn’t be shrinking
I have my own views about North Carolina’s labor-market woes, but the first step to debating the issue well is to agree on the basic scope of the problem.
Opinion
North Carolina leads in jobs lost
We should all take reasonable precautions, absolutely. But keeping schools, public venues, and large swaths of our economy closed or severely constrained indefinitely strikes me as the opposite of reasonable.
Opinion
National unemployment rate reaches more than 19%
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released “The Employment Situation — April 2020” Friday stating the seasonally adjusted national unemployment rate was 14.7%. But on page three of the report, the agency explains that due to the unique nature of the coronavirus, “the overall unemployment rate would have been almost 5 percentage points higher than...
Opinion
Labor shortage teaches policy lesson
At its peak in 2010, the unemployment rate in the Hickory-Morganton-Lenoir metropolitan area hit 15.3 percent, the highest in modern North Carolina history. Now the region has one of the state's most acute labor shortages.
News
Cooper makes appeal for common ground to skeptical General Assembly
RALEIGH — Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper sought common ground during his first State of the State address to the Republican-controlled General Assembly on Monday night. While the governor’s 37-and-a-half-minute speech asked lawmakers for cooperation with his plans to improve education, recruit jobs, fight the opioid crisis, and help those still affected by Hurricane Matthew, Republicans used their...
Opinion
State tops region on labor market
During the Great Recession and its immediate aftermath, North Carolina greatly exceeded the national average in unemployment and underemployment. Now, we don’t.
Opinion
Jobless rate misses full story
From mid-2013 to mid-2016, North Carolina’s underemployment rate fell by 5.4 percentage points — the largest labor-market improvement in the Southeast.
Opinion
Labor Market Woes Are National
While North Carolina’s unemployment rate currently stands at just under 6 percent, some argue that problems in the state’s labor market are worse than that one statistic would indicate.
Opinion
NC Economy Compares Well
Now that North Carolina’s “headline” unemployment statistic has ticked up for several months, the same liberals who once treated it as misleading are now citing it authoritatively.
