So what is the state of North Carolina’s economy? 

A “mixed bag” according to a recently published story in The News & Observer (Raleigh) in conjunction with The Charlotte Observer and McClatchy.  The media organizations assessed the state of North Carolina with a focus on 20 measures of how the state is doing compared with previous years and compared with Georgia, Virginia and the rest of the nation.

Key findings:

• NC has been adding jobs at a pace of about 7,000 a month over the past few years.
• The state had above-average job growth from July 2015 to July 2016.
• NC’s economy performs similarly to Georgia’s and worse than Virginia’s.
• Wages are back to pre-recession levels, but people are also more likely to be in poverty.
• Employment in NC is better than average — but only if people who have given up on job hunts aren’t counted. A smaller share of North Carolina adults are in the labor force than Americans as a whole.
• For each of the last 20 months, companies in both North and South Carolina have reported being unable to fill open jobs.
• At 4.6 percent, the state’s unemployment rate is better than the national average. The state has 290,000 more jobs than it did in 2007.

Read the full article here.