Jobless rate falls but can we sustain growth?
Published November 28, 2013
Editorial by Fayetteville Observer, November 26, 2013.
Is North Carolina's economic dry spell, long one of the nation's worst unemployment rates, finally ending?
Perhaps. If the state's October unemployment rate - down to 8 percent - is an accelerating trend, then our economy may finally be seeing the rebound its leaders and workers have long awaited.
The October numbers have us heading out of the top 10 jobless rates in the country. It's one place where we're happy to relinquish a leadership role.
Instead, we were listed with the winners, joining Florida and California with the biggest job gains. The national rate of 7.3 percent seems within reach. It wasn't that long ago we were keeping company with states like Nevada, which still has the nation's worst rate, 9.3 percent.
The improvement may be sustainable, if it's connected with reforms in corporate taxes and regulations lawmakers enacted earlier this year. But it's too soon to be certain there's a connection.
What we're not seeing yet is a robust business expansion - not in North Carolina, nor in most other parts of the country. Employers are still reluctant to create large numbers of new jobs, although this state saw substantial growth in October in professional and business-services positions. But construction jobs fell again. Jobs in that sector have diminished by at least 2 percent this year.
But even if we're out of the darkest grove in the economic woods, we've yet to prove we can sustain a vibrant economy, despite all those journals that consistently rank us as one of the best places in the country to do business.
We need the ability to continuously create a ready workforce, a stream of well-educated, well-trained workers ready for any employer who wants to move here or expand an existing business. That requires, most fundamentally, an excellent system of public education. And if a new survey conducted by two UNC-Wilmington professors is right, we may be moving in the wrong direction.
The survey of state public-school teachers by professors Scott Imig and Robert Smith found low morale and a desire to quit teaching. About 75 percent said they're considering working in other fields, thanks to ill-considered education reform passed in the General Assembly this year. More than half said they might continue working as a teacher, but in some other state.
Our unemployment rate is no longer among the worst, but our teacher pay and per-pupil expenditures are. Our economic recovery may be real, but without a great educational system to feed the growth, it could be short-lived.
November 28, 2013 at 11:07 am
TP Wohlford says:
This piece is proof that journalism grads don't have to learn much to get a diploma.
Math, for starters, isn't taught. Cause if math was taught the writer would realize that the reason the PERCENTAGE went down is 'cause fewer people are thought to be looking for work, NOT that we have more jobs and more people working. Last I checked, NC is just now returning to the number of people employed as when the Great Recession started -- but the population has increased.
Logic isn't taught either. I see jobs going to China, Mexico and other places, which doesn't even feature people who are literate in their own language, much less English, and certainly not able to pass a standardized American exam! Indeed, many of the jobs we've lost in the past 20 years or so didn't exactly need an education -- skills and talent perhaps, but nothing taught in local schools.
For that matter, I point to a current glut of PhD'd "Rocket Scientists" -- electrical engineers, chemists, physicists, etc -- whose unemployment rate is above the national average.
Finally, let me note that the unemployment rate for J-school grads, in field, is about 99.9%. Hardly people to make the case that "more spending on education means more jobs". And their awards for achievement are named after people w/o a college degree, their most famous names lack college degrees, and one the largest corporations -- Advance -- is headed by a college drop out ("Gee, thanks dad!").
