North Carolina’s unemployment rate has remained over 10-percent for the past year. Despite the high rate, one sector continues to experience growth.
Leoneda Inge: From January last year to January this year “Professional and Business Services” has gained nearly 14-thousand jobs. That’s the largest private sector job gain under non-farm employment. Jeff Higdon is owner and operations manager of Express Employment Professionals. He says last year, Express found jobs for close to one-thousand people in administrative support, customer service and at call centers.
Jeff Higdon: Last year seemed to be really a change, a shift, if you will, in that we were really starting to get back to how things were 2007 and before, or mid-2008 and before where the majority of the positions that we’re hiring for are were going to turn into full-time employment situations for those people.
Still, North Carolina’s jobless rate is 10-point-two percent, almost two points higher than the national average.