The percentage of people that are unemployed in North Carolina continued to drop over the last two months, but that’s still more than the national average.
The state’s rate was 8 percent in October, down from 8.3 percent in September and 8.7 percent in August, the state Commerce Department said today. Numbers for September were published today because some offices were closed when they were scheduled to be released during the federal government shut down.
MekaelTeshome, a PNC Financial economist, says there’s a caveat to the measure because it means there's a continuing number of people leaving the labor force because they've been long-term unemployed or have gone back to school. Yet he says there is good news.
"Despite the disruption that we saw in the fall, particularly with the government shutdown, there is enough juice in the economic recovery that we've been able to shut that off," Teshome said.
The trend indicates the state’s economic recovery will continue through 2014, Teshome says. The national unemployment rate for October was 7.3 percent.
