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How can individuals tell for themselves if North Carolina is producing an adequate number of new jobs? The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta provides an excellent web-based tool that allows us to estimate how much job growth, over how many months, is needed in North Carolina in order to bring our unemployment rate down to pre-Recession levels. However, these estimates can vary depending on the assumptions that we plug into the application.

The recent growth of North Carolina manufacturing production has resulted in The Tar Heel State having the fourth largest manufacturing economy in the U.S.

A recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the number of U.S. job openings near a 13-year high. This good news is offset by continued evidence of a “mismatch” between unemployed job seekers and available jobs at the national level. In this post, I explain how the relationship between unemployment and job vacancy rates (the “Beveridge curve”) can help us determine whether a mismatch is also evident in North Carolina’s labor market.

The central counties of the Raleigh and Charlotte metro areas (Wake and Mecklenburg) now account for 30 percent of all workers employed in North Carolina, up from 22 percent two decades ago. This article shows how shifts in the regional distribution of employment have helped bolster overall wages in North Carolina and illustrate the changing economy of the state

Did you know that North Carolina has the eighth largest veteran population in the country? In honor of Veteran's Day, here are some interesting facts that you may not know about North Carolina's veterans.

The number of jobseekers without work for 27 or more weeks has declined considerably from its historic peak in 2010. However, some evidence suggests that North Carolina’s long-term unemployed may continue to struggle several years after the Great Recession. This article describes what we know — and don’t know — about long-term unemployment in North Carolina

Several states — including North Carolina — have been cited as standouts for their achievements using data to support education and workforce development.

Using the Federal Reserve data, we've compared North Carolina to other states in the Southeast. Our state has experienced the second highest growth since September 2013 and looks poised to continue the trend into 2015.

Third quarter GDP was announced yesterday, and the U.S. grew at an annualized rate of 3.5 percent. The increase was partially driven by spending on the military — a major sector in North Carolina.

Each month, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia publishes a leading index, looking six months ahead, and a coincident index, tracking current conditions. We will explore where the leading index predicts the North Carolina economy will be in six months, what goes into creating these indices, and whether the leading index does a good job of predicting economic trends.

The unemployment rate for states and local areas is a blurry snapshot when it is initially released. This picture becomes clearer over time as the rate is subsequently revised. The following article explains why these revisions, which can be quite large, are a natural consequence of how the unemployment rate is estimated.

An oft-ignored side effect of an aging workforce is its impact on the average wage. Increasing numbers of workers in North Carolina are now in the prime of their careers and are being compensated accordingly, driving up earnings across the state. But what happens when these mature workers retire and are replaced by younger workers at the lower end of the pay scale?

While the national labor force participation rate has been declining for the past decade, the participation rate of those aged 55 and older has been on the rise since the mid-1990s. In this post, we address some confusion surrounding declining national labor force participation rates and the role Boomers are playing in that trend, as well as the situation in North Carolina.

The Millennial generation (persons born 1980 or later) is within reach of surpassing the Boomer generation (those born from 1946 to 1964) as the largest segment of North Carolina’s adult population. As older generations retire from North Carolina’s labor force, this article asks whether younger cohorts will be able to take their place.

Economic growth in North Carolina has progressed at a steady pace since the worst of the Great Recession. However, several data points show that the state’s labor market is growing less dynamic, with fewer workers hopping from job to job and overall hiring and firing activity stuck at unusually low levels. The following article illustrates this troubling trend using data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics and explains what implications it might have for the economic health of our state.