NC January jobless rate hits record 11.1 percent

By: Emery P. Dalesio | Associated Press
Published: March 11, 2010

Raleigh --

The recession pushed North Carolina's unemployment rate to 11.1 percent in January, a historic high, the Employment Security Commission reported Wednesday. January also marked a year that the state's jobless rate has been stuck above its previous high.
North Carolina was among five states that reported record-high joblessness in January. The other states were California, at 12.5 percent; South Carolina, 12.6 percent; Florida, 11.9 percent; and Georgia, 10.4 percent. Thirty states in the nation saw their unemployment rates raise in January.
January's unemployment rate in North Carolina rose from a revised 10.9 percent in December to the highest level since states started their current calculation method in 1976. Before this recession, the state's peak unemployment rate was 9.7 percent in March 1983, a level topped in February 2009 and exceeded ever since. Experts say the latest unemployment rate is certainly the worst since the Great Depression.
"This is pretty bad," said Andrew Brod, an economist at University of North Carolina at Greensboro. "Not since the 1930s have we seen this."
Unemployment in January increased by 8,325 workers to more than 500,000.
Chuck Brown, manager of the Employment Security Commission office in Morganton, said his office is seeing some steady job openings but a lot of the openings are being filled rapidly. He said many of the openings are replacement jobs, such as when someone quits or retires.
Brown said it seems as if his office also is having fewer temporary layoffs. He said it's not that big of a change but it is a slight change.
But there hasn't been an increase in openings for jobs that would typically signal an improvement in the economy.
Brown said those jobs would include construction, transportation (truck drivers) jobs associated with warehouses and temporary jobs.
"And we just haven't seen those yet," Brown said.
Brown said his office had 50 job openings on Wednesday, which included military jobs.
As for the country, its January unemployment rate decreased slightly to 9.7 percent.
Since the U.S. fell into recession in Dec. 2007, North Carolina has lost 275,000 nonfarm jobs, including 101,500 manufacturing workers. That means the state's employers would have to hire 4,600 more workers every month for five years to get back to the level preceding the recession, the Employment Security Commission said.
The high unemployment rate has meant longer periods before workers are able to find new jobs. About 40 percent of the country's unemployed have been out of work six months or longer. But in one encouraging sign, the U.S. Labor Department reported last week that the number of long-term unemployed fell for the first time since November 2008.
One reason that joblessness may remain high for a long time is that the recession was worsened by a banking crisis that hasn't yet been resolved, Brod said.
"It's more than consumers and businesses deciding they ought to cut back for a while. There's actual obstacles set up in the blood veins of the economy. Things aren't circulating in the economy," Brod said. "Small businesses and farmers are still having trouble getting loans to move their businesses forward. When small business owners can't even get the financing just to operate normally, they're not going to hire people."

Sharon McBrayer, a staff writer for The News Herald, contributed to this story.