Employment and wage growth diverged across North Carolina's counties in 2025: jobs grew in half of the state’s counties, with most of the net gain concentrated in a handful of large or suburban counties, while wages outpaced inflation in most.
This post, the second in a two-part series on North Carolina's 2025 Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) data, draws on the newly released federal-state QCEW program, a partnership between the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and state labor market information entities. In North Carolina, LEAD collects, compiles, validates, and submits employer-reported data to BLS, which processes and publishes the official QCEW statistics. The QCEW provides one of the most comprehensive measures of employment and wages, with data available by industry and geography. The figures here compare 2025 annual averages to 2024, extending the previous statewide review to the county and Workforce Development Board (WDB) regional level, geographic detail not available from the Current Employment Statistics (CES), the monthly survey behind the state's headline employment figures.[1]
Employment Growth Was Uneven Across Counties
Employment grew in 50 of North Carolina's 100 counties from 2024 to 2025, but the growth was not broadly shared. The median county was flat at 0%, even as statewide employment rose 0.8% over the year. The largest percentage gains occurred in smaller or suburban counties, led by Pamlico (10.0%), Chatham (9.6%), and Pender (9.2%), while Mitchell (-8.7%), Bladen (-6.9%), and Perquimans (-6.3%) saw the steepest declines.[2]
In absolute terms, Wake added roughly 12,500 jobs, about a third of the statewide net gain of roughly 39,500 jobs, with the next-largest contributions coming from large counties like Guilford and Mecklenburg, along with suburban counties like Johnston, Union, and Cabarrus. Together, these six counties accounted for roughly four-fifths of the state's net job gain.
Wages Outpaced Inflation in Most Counties
Average weekly wages, which measure total wages divided by the number of jobs, grew faster than the 2.6% national inflation rate in 77 of 100 counties.[3][4] After adjusting for inflation, the median county gained 1.5%, in line with the statewide gain of 1.4%. The largest inflation-adjusted gains came in Tyrrell (8.8%), Alleghany (8.6%), and Chatham (5.9%), while 23 counties saw wages fall behind rising prices, most steeply in Polk (-2.8%), Cleveland (-2.3%), and Davidson (-2.1%).
Notably, some counties gained ground on inflation even as they lost jobs. Because wages are measured per job, a county's average reflects more than pay rates. It also moves with the hours worked and the mix of higher- and lower-paying jobs. Shedding lower-paid or shorter-hour positions can raise it even as employment falls.
Regional Patterns Across Workforce Development Boards
Looking across North Carolina’s 20 local Workforce Development Boards tells a similar story. Wages outpaced inflation in 18 of the 20 boards, while employment rose or held steady in 12. High Country posted the strongest inflation-adjusted wage growth at 3.8%, and Centralina led employment growth at 2.7%. Lumber River recorded the largest employment decline at -2.1%. A full list of the counties in each board is available at analytics.nccommerce.com/Regional-Labor-Market-Overviews.
Overall, the county and regional data show that employment growth was concentrated in selected areas, while wage gains generally outpaced inflation across much of North Carolina.
Explore the Data
Curious how your county or workforce region fared? The table below reports employment and inflation-adjusted wage growth for all 100 counties and 20 Workforce Development Boards. The full QCEW data for North Carolina, including county-level employment and wages, is available through the Labor & Economic Analysis Division's (LEAD) D4 data tool at d4.nccommerce.com. For more labor market data and analysis, visit LEAD Analytics at analytics.nccommerce.com.
1 Some year-to-year changes in QCEW data can reflect technical factors, such as reclassification of an establishment's industry or location, changes to the industrial classification system, or changes in the unemployment insurance program, rather than actual changes in the economy.
2 Percentage changes are most sensitive to shifts in the state's least populated counties, where employment and wage figures rest on a smaller employment base.
3 Wages are adjusted using the national CPI-U. The resulting figures reflect national price changes and are not adjusted for cost-of-living differences within North Carolina.
4 Real (inflation-adjusted) wage growth is calculated using unrounded figures as:
