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Federal COVID aid helped reduce racial employment gaps, but a lot of work still to do in NC
With all of the focus on inflation over the past few years, an important and instructive story has often been lost in the noise. Unlike past recoveries when the effects of a recession linger much longer for workers of color, the strong economic growth fueled by federal COVID-aid has dramatically reduced the employment gap between white and Black workers nationwide.
NC jobs up and inflation still slowing, but rising interest rates are cause for caution
First, today’s state employment report showed continued growth. North Carolina added around 32,000 jobs in the first two months of 2023, continuing a nearly uninterrupted streak of monthly job gains dating back to the first few months of the pandemic. That puts North Carolina nearly 260,000 jobs above pre-pandemic levels, and the unemployment rate dipped to 3.6 percent.
That’s all good news, but today’s jobs figures don’t capture any fallout from recent upheaval in the banking system.
Slowing job growth and gaping holes in the recovery clear in new NC employment figures
After revising data for the past few years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released employment figures for January of 2023 this week. The new data paint a clearer picture of how hiring slowed last year and where the economic recovery from COVID-19 remains incomplete. We’re still seeing decent jobs growth, but many communities and public services are being left behind in North Carolina.
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.
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…
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.
NC continues to gain jobs, but is losing state employees over pay that isn’t keeping up with inflation
Amid this relatively sunny topline news is a dark cloud created by our state legislature: a failure to ensure that public servants’ pay keeps up with inflation, which means that North Carolina has continued losing state employees that provide the key services our communities need.
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.
Unemployment Insurance worked, but NC workers who needed it most didn’t see the full benefit
North Carolina could have benefited even more if our state’s Unemployment Insurance policies were in line with what is needed to stabilize households and local economies during hard times. In 2013, state policymakers made changes that reduced the effectiveness of the program. Today, North Carolina’s Unemployment Insurance continues to provide too few dollars in wage replacement for too short a time for too few of the workers who have lost their jobs.
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.
