The Lead Feed

After a volatile year, newly-released data revisions show that North Carolina’s unemployment and labor force participation rates are in fact on a steady path as we head into 2018.  This article explains what labor market watchers can learn from these new data and provides some helpful tips to avoid getting caught off-guard by data revisions.

Since 1990, women have become increasingly concentrated within the ranks of healthcare practitioners. A look at the data shows that Registered Nurses don’t explain the trend. To identify many of the women finding work in this field, you have to look for the white lab coats.

Workers with Bachelor’s degrees earn far more on average than the rest of the population. But some college majors lead to higher-paying jobs than others. This article shows which majors yielded the highest earnings for 2002-2003 graduates of North Carolina’s university system, using data from LEAD’s outcome reporting website NC TOWER.

Are counties seeing their resident workers report to work in county more today than in the past?

Different industries have different starting times for work.  This post explores industry and regional differences in work starting times among North Carolina workers.

The United Census Bureau introduced the 2017 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) structure this year, as is done every five years. When looking at changes occurring in North Carolina, there are several worth noting.

The success of large urban metros has been well-documented across the country; They have long-since recovered from the Great Recession, while rural areas are still struggling by and large.  The idea that our very different urban and rural areas are competing against each other might not be fair, or realistic.  The question we need to be asking is how are these areas doing relative to similarly sized geographies across the United States?  And more importantly, what can we learn from these comparable areas outside of our state?

LEAD recently released a report examining unemployed workers and unemployment insurance recipients in North Carolina during the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and its aftermath. This article outlines our main findings, highlighting the attributes and employment outcomes of the long-term unemployed in our state.

On September 15, 2017, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the State Employment and Unemployment news release for August 2017. With so many people impacted by the never-ending barrage of storms in the news lately, BLS included the following statement.

Different research articles have different conclusions about the rate of automation and its impact on future work. This article explores a new approach developed by ITIF by seeing how it operates in North Carolina.

What happened in the North Carolina economy in 2016? How did the economy fare compared to the U.S. and previous years? What key trends are emerging since the Great Recession? A new LEAD report looks at several key economic indicators for the state, including population and labor force growth, unemployment and wage trends, industry and GDP changes, and projected employment.

North Carolina releases a list of Top 300 Private Employers, compiled annually, based off the first quarter employment size as reported by the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wage (QCEW) program. The list breaks out employers by manufacturing and nonmanufacturing.

What happened to middle-wage jobs? This is a question that can be seen on dozens of news article headlines across the country. Although the economy is growing, the types of occupations that have returned since the recession have been uneven. A troubling aspect of employment growth over the past decade has been the decline of middle-wage jobs combined with the explosion of low-wage professions.

The Sandhills Prosperity Zone has undergone a transformation in its economy since the turn of the century—while its population has grown (mainly through natural increase rather than in-migration), the number of jobs has actually fallen by 1.7 percent. At the same time, the industry mix of the region has shifted in ways typical of other rural regions of the state—with a decline in manufacturing and a shift to jobs in health care, retail, and accommodation and food service. While manufacturing is still important to the region, the mix of types of manufacturing is different. While this shift from goods-producing to service-producing has occurred throughout the state, however the Sandhills region has not gained enough jobs to grow their economy to the same extent as the state.

Decline in the labor force participation is an often-discussed topic of the recent Great Recession and its recovery. Numerous demographic factors have played a role in the decline, including the growing number of older Americans and their decreasing labor force participation rates. However, there has been a real effect from the decline of youth employment – primarily youth seeking summer work. This article discusses youth summer employment in North Carolina, and its changes over the past two decades.