Patrick McHugh

Posts by Patrick McHugh

Blog
February 1, 2023

Late 2022 job growth in NC concentrated in metro areas, while many counties still facing challenges

Job growth in North Carolina is heavily concentrated in a few major metropolitan areas.

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Blog
January 30, 2023

Tax cuts have failed to reverse North Carolina’s declining employment levels

Tax cuts passed since 2013 have failed to roll back a long-term slide in the share of North Carolinians working.

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Screenshot of first page of Corporate Tax Cut Timeline in NC
Blog
January 25, 2023

As legislative session starts, a timeline of tax cuts in North Carolina

Let’s take a look at the direction that NC legislators have pushed tax policy in the past decade and where they may be trying to go this year.

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GIF of a bullhorn with flowers growing out of it, that says "Time to thrive"
Blog
December 21, 2022

The future is being built today: Little moments from 2022 that give us heart

Economic and policy transformations are rooted in small moments, often nearly imperceptible in the moment, but clearly momentous with the benefit of time. We saw a lot of moments with that kind of potential this year.

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Blog
December 16, 2022

With interest rates falling and job growth slowing, North Carolina workers face an uncertain 2023

The Federal Reserve did what most market watchers expected and hiked interest rates yesterday, bringing the federal benchmark to 4.4 percent, the highest rate in 15 years. The size of the hike was smaller than the last several rounds as it appears Fed policy is finally taking some of the sting out of inflation. But…

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Blog
December 2, 2022

NC leaders still need to extend more aid, but inflation is easing as hiring remains strong

For the first time since costs started shooting up last year, the annual rate of inflation in the South has now come down for four months in a row. After hitting a peak in June, the annual pace of inflation has fallen to just over 8 percent in the South, and overall prices in the South actually went down in October.

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Blog
November 2, 2022

Local NC labor markets make progress as the Fed keeps up effort to bring inflation to heel

On the same day that Federal Reserve policymakers announced another hike to the lending rate, new local labor market data show that the recovery from COVID-19 continues to spread across North Carolina. The pace of recovery is far from uniform and worries about the potential for a recession cannot be ignored, but the strong job growth we’ve seen over the past few years continues.

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Blog
September 29, 2022

Taxes on rich people helped to beat inflation (and Hitler)

It’s worth looking back at how taxes helped tackle inflation during WWII and what lessons NC leaders still need to draw from that bit of economic history.

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Report
September 27, 2022

Executive Summary: North Carolina Budget Report 2022-23

The state budget passed for the 2022-23 fiscal year fails to adequately address the impacts of inflation. Even with federal aid and a robust recovery driving higher than expected revenues, the state budget fell short of meeting the challenges created by inflation running at a 40-year-high in several ways:

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Blog
September 16, 2022

New NC labor market data: It’s been a really good week for economic news

North Carolina has continued to add jobs over the past few months, and more people are rejoining the labor market. Even after four interest rate hikes this year and the market bracing for another round later this month, around 145,000 jobs have been created in North Carolina in 2022 and almost 200,000 in the past twelve months.

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