Friday, April 20, 2012

NC job growth a dead shark

Woody Allen had a great quip in Annie Hall. "A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark."

A similar thing applies in job growth, and what we've got on our hands in terms of North Carolina job growth is a dead shark.

For the second month in a row, the monthly state jobs report indicates that job growth has completely, utterly, unmistakenly stalled. To borrow from another movie, job growth is not only merely dead, it's really most sincerely dead.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the state lost 1,300 jobs on a seasonally-adjusted basis (basically no change in jobs) in March after adding a barely detectable 6,100 jobs the month before.

The national job report had indicated that the U.S. as a whole added a very modest number of jobs. However, even relative to this modest standard, North Carolina continued to under-perform.