The following editorial appeared in the September print edition of Carolina Journal:
RALEIGH — In late August, the state Employment Security Commission reported that North Carolina’s unemployment rate fell slightly, from 10.4 percent in June to 10.3 percent in July. Local education employment rose by 2,900 over the past year, from 129,400 in July 2010 to 132,300 this July. Even during a recession and notwithstanding a tight budget climate in Raleigh, the employment level at K-12 schools remained steady.
Over the past 12 months, local government employment (including education-related employment) stayed fairly stable as well, dropping slightly from 348,600 last July to 347,900 last month — a scant 700 jobs lost.
Wait, that’s not what you heard? According to news reports, the unemployment rate rose from 9.9 percent to 10.1 percent. And 11,000 government jobs were lost, with a majority of those cutbacks coming from teachers.
The headline-grabbing numbers also were from ESC. Gov. Bev Perdue tried to tout them the day before the jobs report was released to the public, telling an audience in Asheville (erroneously) that the unemployment rate would rise by a full percentage point (the actual increase was 0.2 percent), and casting the blame at the budget-cutting, GOP-led General Assembly.
The figures Perdue clumsily cited came from data that were “seasonally adjusted” — they were modified using a series of estimates based on a guess of how many people should have been working at those establishments in a normal economic environment. The report showing a gain of jobs and a drop in the unemployment rate was “not seasonally adjusted,” originating from actual surveys of government and business establishments.
Given the wide discrepancies in jobs reports, and the ways they can be manipulated to satisfy political agendas, it’s important to remember that a single month’s report is merely a snapshot, often a fuzzy one, of an ever-changing employment market. Besides, the information in any release will be revised, perhaps significantly, perhaps negating any conclusions you could draw from the initial data.
If Perdue really wanted to beat up on Republicans, she could have used an ESC report and noted, from not seasonally adjusted data, that government agencies overall lost 77,700 jobs from June to July of this year, 70,000 of them in local education.
Then again, that might be another unforced error on her part. The employment numbers drop by tens of thousands every summer when schools are not in session. School buildings empty as teachers, custodians, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, principals, and other employees take well-deserved vacations.
Indeed, since 2000, local education employment has shrunk every year by at least 20.3 percent from June to July. The biggest drop of all — 38.2 percent — took place in 2010, when Perdue and Democrats were in complete charge of state government.
To be sure, employment bounces back in the fall, and then some. In every year since 2000, overall government employment in December has been higher than it was in June. So when you’re hearing about government jobs reports, don’t let the spin make you dizzy.