Author: Andrew Berger-Gross
Welcome to the March 2025 edition of NC Economy Watch: an update on what’s happening in the North Carolina economy and what it means for you, brought to you by the Labor & Economic Analysis Division (LEAD) of the NC Department of Commerce.
In this edition of NC Economy Watch, we examine the employment data revisions just released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. These revised data show job growth slowing and job gains narrowing, with the Education & Health Services and Government sectors accounting for 97% of our state’s net job growth in 2024. Meanwhile, revised data also show that the Asheville metro area had more economic momentum going into Hurricane Helene than initially estimated, a hopeful sign for the region’s post-hurricane employment recovery.
Revised Data Show Job Growth Has Been Dominated by Healthcare and Government
The start of a new year is a time for reflecting on the previous year and speculating about the year to come, so in January, we published an article highlighting the three key economic trends we’re currently watching. Unfortunately, we were operating on incomplete information when we wrote that article. Even though we’re now in the third month of 2025, new economic data from last year are still being released, and these data have already changed what we thought we knew about the 2024 economy.
These new data include the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) annual data revisions. In March of each year, the BLS publishes revised historical data on unemployment and job growth for every state in the nation, including North Carolina. These revisions, which incorporate new information that wasn’t available when the preliminary data were first reported, provide a more accurate depiction of how the economy performed last year and offer more clarity about where we might be headed in the year to come.
At a high level, these revised data are largely consistent with the economic narrative as we previously understood it. This year’s revisions had relatively little effect on North Carolina’s unemployment rate, which ended 2024 at 3.7% in both the preliminary and the revised data. The revisions to North Carolina’s job growth estimates were more impactful: while preliminary estimates showed over-the-year job growth at +1.7% in December 2024, the revised data show us ending the year at +0.9%. In other words, North Carolina added jobs at only around half the pace that was initially estimated. This downward revision is consistent with longstanding trends: North Carolina and the rest of the United States are now entering the fourth year of a prolonged labor market slowdown, with the hiring rate at its lowest level in 10 years and job growth slowing considerably from the breakneck pace we saw earlier during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Revisions to job growth data at the industry sector level have been more surprising. These revisions confirm that last year’s job losses were concentrated in North Carolina’s Manufacturing sector, which is now in its third straight year of declining employment, while job gains were concentrated in Education & Health Services, in particular the Health Care & Social Assistance sector, which is experiencing ever-increasing demand as our population grows older and sicker [Figure 1]. However, these data also show large downward revisions in service-providing industries like Leisure & Hospitality and Professional & Business Services that were previously thought to be some of the fastest-growing sectors of our economy. Data revisions reveal that Education & Health Services and Government were overwhelmingly the largest drivers of job growth in 2024. Before the revisions, these sectors accounted for 53% of net job growth in North Carolina; now, the revised data show these sectors accounted for 97% of our state’s net job growth.
Figure 1
In other news, data revisions also show that the Asheville metro area had more economic momentum going into Hurricane Helene than initially estimated, with over-the-year job growth at +1.4% in August 2024 vs. +0.6% in the preliminary data [Figure 2]. The data that have come in since then show Asheville’s job growth recovering from its October 2024 lows, and if our experience following Hurricane Florence is any indication, the region could return to its pre-hurricane growth trajectory before the end of this year.
Figure 2
Of course, these data aren’t the final word on Western North Carolina’s employment recovery. In June, the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program is scheduled to release new data for the fourth quarter of 2024. Data from QCEW will give us a more accurate and much more detailed picture of Hurricane Helene’s employment impact and the region’s subsequent recovery, including data for individual counties and industry sectors.
We will continue to track these data and report on what’s happening in the North Carolina economy and what it means for you in future editions of NC Economy Watch.
For inquiries and requests, please contact:
Meihui Bodane, Assistant Secretary for Policy, Research and Strategy
NC Department of Commerce, Labor & Economic Analysis Division (LEAD)