‘So much uncertainty.’ Mecklenburg County’s May unemployment rates remain high
Mecklenburg County had an unemployment rate of 13.6% in May, an increase from April’s rate of 12.8%, according to data released by the state on Wednesday.
The county has seen high unemployment rates in the past few months due to the economic impacts of COVID-19 shutdowns.
Approximately 82,284 people in the county are unemployed, out of a labor force of 605,494. In May 2019, the county’s unemployment rate was 3.6%.
Although the unemployment rate in the county has increased, it is rising at a slower pace than it was at the beginning of the pandemic, said Antony Burton, vice president of economic research at the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance.
In April, the county’s unemployment rate increased almost 9 percentage points from March, The Charlotte Observer previously reported.
“The big blow has kind of already happened,” Burton said. “And we’ll kind of see where it goes from here.”
Nearby jobs rates
Mecklenburg County’s unemployment rate for May is higher than the state’s unemployment rate of 12.7%. The county traditionally has a lower unemployment rate than the state, but Burton said the county was hit hard due to a concentration in leisure and hospitality, two markets that were particularly affected by COVID-19.
These were the unemployment rates for some counties near Mecklenburg in May: Union County had a rate of 10.3%, Cabarrus County had 12.5% and Gaston County saw 14.2%.
In April, 77 of the 100 N.C. counties had unemployment rates at or above 10%. Data for May show that 81 counties now have unemployment rates at or above 10%. No counties have unemployment rates below 5%.
The unemployment rates in Mecklenburg County for April and May are higher than any unemployment rates the county saw during the Great Recession, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
‘A long road’
Burton said a decrease in unemployment is dependent on how the virus is controlled.
“I think it’s going to be kind of a long road because I think we’re far from people feeling comfortable going out, and we’re far from really having a great handle on the pandemic within our area, within our state, within Charlotte,” he said.
Burton said it’s hard to predict what the unemployment rate will be in the coming months.
“It’s really kind of too hard too early to tell because there’s so much uncertainty about where the pandemic is going to go,” he said.
