North Carolina's unemployment rate continued its steady decline in March, according to the North Carolina Department of Commerce
The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell two-tenths of a percentage point last month to 3.5%. Non-farm employment increased by more than 18,100. The largest gains came in construction (4,200 additional workers), education and health services (4,000) and manufacturing (3,200).
There were slight decreases in employment among mining and logging businesses, which lost 100 workers. Trade, transportation and utility firms lost 1,300 workers last month.
Overall, the Commerce Department says nearly 192,000 more North Carolinians are working now than this time last year. The agency will release county-level unemployment data for March at the end of the month.
Across the U.S., the number of people seeking unemployment benefits ticked up last week but remained at a historically low level, reflecting a robust U.S. labor market with near record-high job openings and few layoffs. Jobless claims rose by 18,000 to 185,000, the Labor Department said, after nearly touching the lowest level since 1968 in the previous week.
The four-week average of claims, which levels out week-to-week ups and downs, edged up from 170,000 to 172,000. Two years after the coronavirus pandemic sent the economy into a brief but devastating recession, American workers are enjoying extraordinary job security. Weekly applications for unemployment aid, a proxy for layoffs, have remained consistently below their pre-pandemic level of 225,000.
