RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - North Carolina’s rising unemployment rate slowed in March to 10.8 percent, a postive sign since the number had been rapidly worsening each month since the banking and credit crisis took hold last fall, the state Employment Security Commission said Friday.
The March figure is North Carolina’s highest on record since states started the current measuring method in 1976. North Carolina’s jobless rate soared from 7 percent in October to 10.7 percent in February.
“The rate changed very little simply because it changed so much in the four previous months. It had to slow down,” Appalachian State University banking professor Harry Davis. The chief economist for the North Carolina Bankers Association, Davis said he expects the jobless rate to rise to 12 percent by summer and for layoffs to continue until this time next year.
North Carolina’s unemployed ranks have increased by more than 248,000 people in the past year. More than 41,000 workers lost their jobs in March. Only California, Florida and Texas had more pink slips. North Carolina’s jobless rate is also among the country’s most severe, with only Michigan, the leader at 12.6 percent, Oregon, South Carolina, and California suffering more.
North Carolina’s manufacturing and construction industries continued to be severely hurt by the recession, each shedding at least 8,500 jobs in the month as consumers slashed spending. But March was also notable because the sector with the greatest decline was professional and business services, where companies cut 10,100 white-collar jobs.
Davis said he believes that was the result of the contraction in banking and finance firms, especially in Charlotte’s banking center, and related services like law firms and computer services companies.
Still, workers in the professional and business services sector continue to be in demand, with job recruiters hunting for engineers and real estate property managers, said Patsy Wiggins, president of The HR Group Inc., a regional human resource management and consulting firm based in Greensboro.
“I think what people are looking for are very highly skilled positions,” she said.
Wiggins said she was heartened by Gov. Beverly Perdue’s announcement Thursday that the state will use federal stimulus funds to bolster community college training in a dozen high-demand fields that require no more than six months of training. Targeted fields include carpentry, plumbing, welding, auto body repair and nursing assistants.
Davis sees accounting jobs as a growth sector as regulations for disclosure and increased transparency in everything from corporate earnings statements to how federal stimulus funds are spent place a premium on effective auditing.
Indeed, accounting and bookkeeping firms have been among the healthiest in the past year, according to Raleigh-based Sageworks Inc., which tracks data from thousands of privately held U.S. businesses. Like accounting firms, information technology consulting and systems design firms have had double-digit sales growth. Also doing well in this economy are chiropractors, physical therapists, and other health practitioners, who have enjoyed 25 percent profit growth in the past year, Sageworks said.
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