The Triangle's unemployment rate dropped slightly in January, but the economic recovery remains painfully slow for those out of work.
New data reported Friday by the N.C. Employment Security Commission showed that unemployment went up in 99 of the state's 100 counties. However, the data are not seasonally adjusted. The News & Observer reports data that have been adjusted to account for seasonal fluctuations by Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte to provide more accurate comparisons.
Those figures showed that the Triangle's unemployment rate dropped to 7.9 percent in January from 8.1 percent in December. That's well below the state and national averages, reinforcing this region's relative strength tied to health care, state government, education, technology and other industries.
"At the current pace, it's going to take us until the middle of the decade to replace the jobs we lost in the recession," said Mark Vitner, senior economist for Wells Fargo.
The January data are difficult to interpret, partly because so many workers who are hired temporarily around the holidays lose those jobs. According to the state data, the number of workers unemployed in the state rose by nearly 35,000 from December to January.
While the seasonally adjusted data show signs of improvement, there's still a long way to go, said John Quinterno, principal for South by North Strategies, a Chapel Hill research firm.
Quinterno estimates that since the economy fell into recession in December 2007, North Carolina has shed 7.4 percent of its payroll employment base, or about 310,400 jobs.
"I think we're seeing stabilization - not recovery yet - in the labor market," he said. "People who have jobs, who made it through and kept positions, I think the odds of them losing their jobs are much, much smaller than they would have been in early 2009. ... I think people can breathe a little easier if they are still employed. But if you've lost your job, you've got a problem because right now we're not seeing any type of real job creation."
That jibes with what job seekers like Rich Sundin of Cary are seeing. With a new son, Sundin said he has been looking for engineering work since early 2009 and has been surviving by taking odd jobs doing carpentry and lawn work.
"I'd like to be optimistic, you know," he said. "I try to be. I think I have a lot of skills people could use. But with the new baby and my wife working, I haven't made it to any job fairs or anything like that in the last few months. I look at the paper. It feels like companies are still holding their own."
Wells Fargo predicts there will be 15,000 new jobs created in the Raleigh-Durham market this year, with the most gains in business and professional services, retailing and health care. And while that's good news, there's still a lot of ground to make up, Vitner said.
"I'm trying to balance in the sense that things are improving yet we've got 6 million people across the country that have been unemployed for six months or more," he said.
