Topics Related to Lead Feed

Lack of access to affordable, high-quality child care is a barrier to labor force participation for working parents in North Carolina and affects our state’s economy. In 2024, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, the NC Chamber Foundation, and NC Child released Untapped Potential in NC, a statewide study that estimated that child care-related work disruptions cost North Carolina’s economy $5.65 billion annually, driven by $4.29 billion in employer costs and $1.36 billion in lost tax revenues.

Nursing graduates enter the workforce with specialized, job-ready skills that are in high demand, positioning them for early career success. Drawing on the latest NC TOWER data, we take a closer look at what happens after graduation for nursing students – where they land their first jobs, average starting salaries, and how their career paths begin to take shape in the years that follow.

Our previous LEAD Feed analysis raised a puzzling question: why has North Carolina's manufacturing output stagnated while the nation's has grown by roughly 30% since 2004? We showed that NC's Nondurable Goods Manufacturing declined 17% over this period even as the national Nondurable Goods output rose 10%. Durable Goods Manufacturing told a similar story: NC's early gains have eroded, and the state is no longer outpacing national growth.

In this edition of NC Economy Watch, we examine labor market data released during and after the federal government shutdown. Despite a partial data blackout, these indicators demonstrate that North Carolina’s labor market has continued to progress along the same path it has in recent years. Although layoffs remain relatively uncommon, a slowdown in hiring has made it increasingly difficult to find a new job. As we enter 2026, we find ourselves staring down the fifth year of a prolonged labor market slowdown.

Lost in the news and hype of Artificial Intelligence’s impact on office work is the current and potential effects AI and machine learning are having on manufacturers and production work. But before ChatGPT and the wave of generative AI, cutting edge manufacturers were beginning to utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning to dramatically reshape factories and work.

This blog dives deeper into gross domestic product (GDP) data for manufacturing, showing trends among durables and nondurable manufacturing industries.

Our recent analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) finds that the share of manufacturing workers nearing retirement has steadily increased and identifies the North Carolina counties where this trend poses the greatest risk.

When you hear the latest unemployment rate, most people imagine it's simply a count of unemployment insurance (UI) claims or UI benefit recipients. A common misconception is that the unemployment rate includes only people who have filed for unemployment insurance benefits. In reality, many unemployed individuals don’t receive those benefits, and much more goes on behind the scenes to calculate this important number.

In this edition of NC Economy Watch, we take stock of the economic recovery in Western North Carolina following the impact of Hurricane Helene. The region’s economic recovery began in earnest in November 2024 and has shown signs of progress with each passing month. However, as more data come in, we are learning that the economic impact of Helene was larger than initially estimated, and so far, by several measures, counties affected by the storm have experienced an incomplete economic recovery.

When you hear about job growth or job losses in the news, do you wonder where those numbers come from? The Current Employment Statistics (CES) program, a federal-state cooperative program, is administered by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in partnership with state agencies like North Carolina's Department of Commerce Labor & Economic Analysis Division (LEAD). The CES represents the gold standard for reporting timely changes in employment levels in the United States.