Unemployment in the Triangle dropped slightly in December, but more than 65,000 people still remain unemployed in the Raleigh-Durham-Cary area.
Overall for the Triangle, the unemployment rate dropped from 8.3 percent in November to 8.1 percent in December. The local rate went in the opposite direction of the state unemployment rate, which was reported last week to have edged up slightly in December to 9.8 percent.
According to data released Tuesday by the N.C. Employment Security Commission, the unemployment rate went down in 66 of the state's 100 counties.
However, the ESC reports data that are not seasonally adjusted, and The News & Observer reports figures that have been seasonally adjusted by Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte.
Though a decrease is obviously good news, actual job growth was not the reason for the decline, said Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wells Fargo.
"Almost all of the improvement we've seen in the past year has come because people have simply given up looking for work," he said.
Vitner pointed to the number of nonfarm jobs created as a better indicator of economic growth. From November to December, the Raleigh-Cary area and the Durham-Chapel Hill area saw a total decrease of 700 jobs. For the year, the two areas combined saw an increase of 3,300 jobs.
"The economy's growing, and we're out of the recession," he said. "But we're growing in a way that is just not creating a lot of jobs. A lot of the growth is occurring in areas that don't create a lot of jobs. There is a small number of highly skilled workers producing a larger volume of output."
For job seekers, there has not been much improvement.
Dennis Kokos and his wife have both been unemployed for the past 18 months. The Raleigh couple have been looking for employment in their previous fields, commercial building security and accounting, and have expanded their searches into other areas.
"There's nobody hiring in my industry," Dennis Kokos said. "I certainly thought I'd have some kind of option, but I haven't seen it yet. I've had four or five interviews for jobs I would have taken. But the competition was very, very stiff."
The state's metro areas are still faring better than rural parts of the state, said John Quinterno, principal for South by North Strategies, a Chapel Hill research firm specializing in economic and social policy.
"There does seem to be a little bit of something bubbling up in some metro areas, which is a good thing because it's going to be the metro areas that play a key role in getting the state back on track," he said.
Still, he added, "we shouldn't lose sight of the big picture. In December 2007, the unemployment rate in Durham-Chapel Hill was 3.8 percent. It was 3.7 percent in Raleigh."
It will likely take well past 2011 for more people to feel the recovery, Quinterno said.
"Some areas may get there a little faster than others, but even in the areas that are doing a little better, we aren't talking about getting back to where we were three years ago any time soon."
