NC's community colleges have surpassed pre-pandemic enrollment levels, growing 23% over five years at four times the national average, according to data presented to the State Board of Community Colleges on March 20.
By deflating the credentialism bubble, we’ll help workers enter new occupations while also improving public services. Sounds like a win-win.
North Carolina’s private sector lost an eye-popping 414,000 jobs in the most-recent quarter. Are we on the brink of economic cataclysm?
I’ve long been bullish on North Carolina’s community colleges. In the past, I’ve praised the system’s cost-effectiveness, its capacity to serve nontraditional students, and the impressive labor-market returns for associate degrees and certificates in such fields as industrial technology, home repair, computer sciences, and health care. Today, I’ll offer you three pieces of good news...
How has North Carolina’s economy been performing lately? Let’s focus on four standard measures: unemployment, jobs, incomes, and gross domestic product. Last week, the US Census Bureau released its latest jobs report. It’s based on two surveys. The household survey polls hundreds of North Carolinians and generates, among other statistics, the unemployment rate. The establishment...
North Carolina is one of the toughest places in the country to enter a new career — and that doesn’t auger well for our future economic performance. The issue is occupational licensing. For dozens of professions, North Carolina requires a prospective employee to possess a specified education credential, receive a specified amount of training, pass...
President Biden has of late unveiled the term “Bidenomics” in an attempt to brand his administration’s economic agenda a success story. “Good jobs and lower costs: That’s Bidenomics in action,” he declared. Unfortunately for him, the American public isn’t buying it. Recent polling shows only 34% of Americans approve of his handling of the economy....
An important feature of the job market is it never stands still. As the economy changes, and the products and services people buy change, so too do jobs. Jobs that exist today may not be around tomorrow. At the same time, jobs that don’t exist today could be part of tomorrow’s economy. Developments in technology are a...
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics just released its latest jobs report for North Carolina and the rest of the country. As usual, the report contained a mixture of good news and bad. First the good. Our headline unemployment rate of 3.8% isn’t just low. It’s much lower than our 5.3% average rate over the...
The U.S. economy is driven by an outsized portion of consumer consumption — 70% to be exact. So even the smallest drop in the nation’s consumers purchasing goods and services is quickly noticeable. Monitoring consumer spending is by far the most accurate way to determine the economy’s performance. Spending was on a tear in 2022, consumers went...
I have two favorite quotes from Ronald Reagan about the world of work. The first one illustrates his mastery of an indispensable political tool: self-deprecating humor. “It’s true hard work never killed anybody,” he quipped, “but I figure, why take the chance?” My other favorite Reagan quote makes a serious point: “I believe the best...
