North Carolina gained over 30,000 jobs in December, as nationwide jobs took a hit
North Carolina gained over 30,000 jobs in December, according to state unemployment numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Tuesday.
The increase of 33,600 jobs in December brought the state’s total employment to 4.4 million in December. Nearly half of the increase came from the trade, transportation and utilities sector, while 11,700 were added in professional and business services, and 4,500 in manufacturing.
The state’s seasonally adjusted December unemployment rate was 6.2%, the same as November’s revised rate. The state gained 28,320 jobs in November.
The jobs gains in North Carolina in December came as the country overall experienced a significant drop in employment. The country lost 140,000 jobs in December, the first decline in employment the country has seen since last April, when 20.8 million jobs were lost in a single month. “The decline in payroll employment reflects the recent increase in coronavirus (COVID-19) cases and efforts to contain the pandemic,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ announcement read.
“North Carolina’s economy did continue to recover in December despite ongoing COVID outbreaks, colder weather and what appears to be deteriorating conditions nationwide,” said Andrew Berger-Gross, senior economist at the N.C. Department of Commerce. “In North Carolina, it’s really just a continuation of the steady growth that we’ve been seeing since the summer.”
Berger-Gross said there’s no single reason why North Carolina’s economy is doing relatively well compared to other states.
“Different states have had different levels of COVID infection, different states have had different degrees of lock down measures and economic restrictions. I don’t think we can necessarily assign attribution for differences in the economic trends to any one of those factors,” he said.
Within the sectors that experienced growth, the retail, transportation and warehousing, and temporary staffing services companies showed the most growth in December, Berger-Gross said.
According to Gregory Brown, professor of finance at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the state’s relatively successful employment outcomes during the pandmemic stem from its significant tech and business services economy.
“It’s not like things are going gangbusters in North Carolina, it’s just that the industries we have have not been as hard hit or really have recovered more quickly than the overall mix of industries you see nationally,” said Brown.
He says that North Carolina’s economic recovery will also be disproportionately aided by continued population growth as people move to North Carolina for jobs in these industries.
North Carolina experienced the third largest job gains of any state, after Texas and Georgia. Nonfarm payroll employment increased in 15 states, decreased in 11, and remained roughly the same in 24 states and Washington, D.C, according to the BLS report.
Uneven recovery
While jobs numbers overall increased in North Carolina, some industries did take a hit: the hospitality sector lost 2,800 jobs in December, as cold weather and COVID-19 spikes kept people away from restaurants.
The release of a second round of support for businesses through the federal Paycheck Protection Program this week could help the industry hold onto more jobs in the coming months.
But those losses in the leisure and hospitality sector are reflective of the state’s uneven economic recovery, Brown said.
“The current dislocation is really bad, and especially bad for some people who are working in restaurant industries and service industries,” Brown said.
Uneven recovery between high paying sectors like tech and financial services and lower wage service and hospitality sectors could accelerate preexisting trends in growing wage disparities.
“Highly skilled labor seems to be in a shortage in the industries, and unskilled labor seems to be in surplus,” he said. That imbalance will likely accelerate income inequality, which in turn drives further disparities in economic recovery. “It might be that the local mom and pop restaurant doesn’t recover but the fancier one does,” he said.
This story was originally published January 26, 2021 at 12:57 PM with the headline "North Carolina gained over 30,000 jobs in December, as nationwide jobs took a hit."
