NC sees jobless rate climbs again, to 10.4 percent

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) North Carolina's unemployment picture grew fuzzier Friday, with a August jobless rate jumping, fewer workers drawing a paycheck, but also more new jobs added than any state but one.The state unemployment rate jumped to 10.4 percent in August from 10.1 percent in July, a highest level since May 2010, a state Employment Security Commission said. North Carolina's jobless rate is worse than a national average of 9.1 percent.North Carolina's unemployment rate increase between July and August was one of a sharpest in a country behind only Illinois and Pennsylvania, two alternative states in which manufacturing has been a big employer. North Carolina has lost 289,300 nonfarm jobs since a recession began in December 2007, with manufacturers shedding nearly one out of five positions or 99,300 jobs in that time.While a state survey of households showed 14,524 fewer workers were employed in August than a month before and an additional 11,747 were jobless and looking, Wells Fargo Securities economist Michael A. Brown saw hope.More people are trying to get back into a workforce, starting to search when previously they were sitting on a sidelines, Brown said. The evidence of that was a separate survey of businesses that reported North Carolina companies adding 16,500 jobs, a country's largest month-to-month employment increase after Minnesota, he said."Essentially, what that does is expand a pool of those individuals who are unemployed because you have a bigger population looking for work," Brown said. "Folks are starting to see that jobs are becoming available, though it's very, very slow. But it's still enough to get them back into a labor market."Private sector jobs have increased by 31,600 this year, whilst supervision employers have shed 11,000 this year, a state employment agency said.The vast majority of a jobs added in August 13,600 were a result of state, internal and federal governments hiring. Some of them were teachers and alternative school workers getting new contracts after a summe! r in whi ch layoffs loomed as a result of tight state and internal budgets."What's going on there is that we're starting to see state and internal revenues are starting to come back," Brown said. "We're actually surpassing expectations for bringing some of those jobs back. I think that that's a positive sign. The real question that remains is will this trend continue."North Carolina collected 7.6 percent more in taxes in August than a same month last year, a Office Of State Controller reported Friday. Tax collections have increased each month this year and were up by 10.3 percent in July in a sign that business and personal incomes were improving.Still, North Carolina had a country's eighth-highest unemployment rate in August, led by Nevada at 13.4 percent, a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.Part of that is because manufacturers and alternative employers have adopted technologies that require aloft technical skills that will take years for thousands of laid-off workers to acquire, Brown said."We are looking at years, and not a matter of months, to get back to a pre-recession peak level of employment," Brown said.___Emery Dalesio can be reached at http://twitter.com/emerydalesio