Triangle Jobless rate stays at 8 percent

The Triangle's unemployment rate remained stuck at 8 percent in October.

It was the third consecutive month that the local unemployment rate failed to show improvement.

New figures released Tuesday by the N.C. Employment Security Commission showed the employment rate dropped in 66 out of 100 counties in North Carolina. However, the ESCdata is not seasonally adjusted. The News & Observer reports data that have been seasonally adjusted by Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte.

Many companies were hesitant to hire new workers prior to the mid-term elections in early November, said Mark Vitner, senior economist for Wells Fargo.

"A lot of people who had plans to expand were holding off until after the election before they would implement them," he said. "They may still be on hold. There's still an awful lot of uncertainty present in the economy, and businesses are just not inclined to take a whole lot of risk."

That's unwelcome news for job seekers, many of whom have been looking for employment for several months.

Joe Albiston was laid off at the end of June from his job working for Durham County doing erosion control and soil monitoring work. Since then he has applied for 70 to 80 jobs, he estimated.

"In the last six weeks, I've heard nothing," said Albiston, 46, who lives in Cary with his wife and three young children. "That's pretty much how it's been. I have had five interviews since May and have not had any in almost two months."

It may be a long road to recovery for workers like Albiston, said John Quinterno, principal for South by North Strategies, a Chapel Hill research firm specializing in economic and social policy.

Overall, since the start of the recession in December 2007, the North Carolina economy has lost 267,800 jobs, he said. The statewide unemployment rate for October fell just slightly to 9.6 percent, matching the national rate.

"We fell into a deep hole," he said. "We've had some positive things in the first half of this year, and those have sort of faded away. We've made some improvement, but we've basically been running in place for the last few months."

That trend may continue, Quinterno predicted, since the economy was helped along this year by a number of federal stimulus programs and extensions of unemployment benefits.

"I think the progress we did make earlier in the year was due largely to the role of public policy support," he said. "Those [programs] have faded away, and we've seen more difficulties."

The Triangle's economy generally fares better than other, more rural parts of the state, Vitner said. But even the tech sector, which recently has seen some improvement, is hampered by the overall economic environment.

"The thing that's most frustrating to me is that it looks like a lot of the jobs we're adding are part-time jobs or temp jobs, and they don't pay a whole lot," he said.

Hiring should pick up in 2011, Vitner said, though the road to recovery will be a long one.

"We're at a pace where we should replace the jobs we lost in the recession somewhere around 2014," he said.

Albiston said those kinds of predictions are disconcerting, but he tries not to focus on them too much.

The unemployment rate "is relevant, but it's not like a speed limit," he said. "I can't do anything about it. I still have to look for a job, even if it was 80 percent."