NC EconWatch: Economist Says NC Adding Jobs
The Associated Press
February 27, 2004

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- North Carolina's diverse job market helped the stateadd jobs over the past few years, bucking a nationwide trend in whichtotal employment shrunk, Wachovia Corp.'s chief economist said.

Nonfarm employment in the state rose 0.61 percent from 2000 through2003, while total employment nationally dropped by 0.53 percent,according to a report published Wednesday.

"Contrary to popular perceptions, this has not been a jobless recovery in North Carolina ," John Silvia said in the report.

The state's beleaguered manufacturers are still slow to hire, but industries such as transportation, education, health, finance and hospitality are growing.

A boost in education jobs better prepares the state's children for entering the work force, Silvia noted.

Also, he said, the availability of jobs here is attracting young, educated professionals, which helps bolster the housing industry.

"There's just no future in Pennsylvania or West Virginia ," Silvia said Thursday to an audience of institutional investors in Chapel Hill . "Giveit up."

Silvia said the state needs to continue diversifying jobs because China and other low-cost competitors will dominate any region that latches onto one industry.

"Be diversified, don't be the furniture capital of the United States ," he said.

The job growth here is still modest, however, at 0.1 percent in December for nonfarm employment. It also is slower than in the typical economic recovery, when companies more rapidly returned to hiring, he said.

One of the biggest drags on the state economy is the manufacturing industry, which North Carolina relies on heavily. Of the state's total workers, 16.7 percent work in manufacturing, compared with the national average of 12 percent.

The education sector's turn around leaves the state with an economic development dilemma -- whether to promote big cities or the countryside.

Most of the manufacturing plants are in rural areas, where companies often don't want to relocate. Businesses have a hard time getting Ph.D.s and other educated workers to move to the "boonies," Silvia said.

The state could focus on luring companies to those areas, while leaving the state's two biggest economies of Charlotte and Raleigh to lure businesses on their own.

Or it can invest in both of them and hope they carry the rest of the state, he said.