RALEIGH – The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics web site (click here) has the latest numbers on unemployment. As has become depressingly familiar, North Carolina doesn’t look good.
Our rate in April, 6.9 percent, ranked fourth in the nation behind Oregon (7.5 percent), Washington (7.1 percent), and Mississippi (7 percent). For a state that thought of itself as a regional economic dynamo for much of the past two decades, North Carolina’s rapid slide into the economic cellar has yet to register in the minds of many. Among Southern states, we are no longer in the “New South” contingent of economic leaders, like Virginia, Georgia, and Florida. We are nearly tied with Mississippi. Mississippi!
Thank God for tenths of a point. Thank God for Mississippi.
Few states have experienced the kind of economic boomerang that we’ve seen in North Carolina. Maybe that’s one reason why, while the rest of the country’s electorate seems pretty satisfied with their political leadership, voters in our state seem ready for a change. You can see it in a variety of indicators: defeated incumbents in last fall’s municipal elections, steeply declining approval ratings for Gov. Mike Easley and Sen. John Edwards, public anger about tax hikes and local budget cuts and the DMV scandal.
Our politicians are just now catching on. At the General Assembly, leaders seem paralyzed with fear that voters will punish them whatever they do to close the budget gap. They might be right. And they can’t rely on gerrymandered districts any more to protect them.
Edwards gets it. Snapped back into reality by paltry approval ratings, he’s spending more time at home and less time tossing his bangs for the national media. Erskine Bowles and Dan Blue also get it – both are playing populist and pitching for disaffected workers in the Democratic primary.
Easley, on the other hand, still thinks it’s 1996. He still thinks that voters care only about maximizing spending on education. No question that education remains a key issue, but it isn’t the only one. It isn’t even the most important concern for many North Carolinians right now who looking for work and hoping that new industries will arise to replace the declining ones.
These voters, many of them swings in state elections, won’t view tax increases with pleasure. They will want to see their leaders take forceful action to turn the economy around soon. The governor’s response is that if we create a state lottery and invest in education, our kids will be more productive workers in 15 years.
It’s a questionable argument at any time, but right now it just sounds irrelevant. As does he.