While Wall Street celebrates the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s highest close since 2007, job growth isn’t keeping pace with stock prices.
The county breakdown of December unemployment rates in North Carolina released this week show a continued trend of job losses in the area. Lenoir County’s not-seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose half a percent to 10.2 and Greene County came in at 9.6 percent. Jones County proved to be an outlier as the only county in the entire state to see its unemployment rate drop — down one-fifth of a percent to 9 percent.
“We’ve had a lot of people who lost jobs in the month of December and have not gone back to work,” said Jamie Wallace, N.C. Division of Workforce Solutions manager for Lenoir and Greene counties. “Claims are still up — we have numerous people taking claims by phone and by Internet. We can’t really put our finger on one particular thing. I’ve noticed too, the numbers have gone up in surrounding counties. Don’t know what to attribute to that.”
After a long trend in gradual job growth, the last four months of data go the other direction. Lenoir is up 0.5 percent from September, Greene is up 0.6 percent and Jones is up 0.3 percent. For the people who lose jobs, there don’t appear to be new positions available.
“In this area, Sanderson Farms has probably been the biggest employer of most of LenoirCountyfolks who are looking for employment. As far as the other manufacturing companies, work has been stable,” Wallace said. “There hasn’t been a lot of turnover — haven’t been a lot of people in looking for jobs (who worked for those companies).
“And, there are a lot of people working at those companies that when they get in, they stay. Generally, those companies don’t advertise postings, because they keep employees. There are several other manufacturing and industrial companies in LenoirCounty— I think there’s a smorgasbord of them around here. But they’re just not advertising any positions right now.”
Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 or wes.wolfe@kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter at WolfeReports.
Breakout Box
Not Seasonally Adjusted Unemployment Rates
December 2012
Lenoir County: 10.2 percent (up 0.5)
Greene County: 9.6 percent (up 0.3)
Jones County: 9 percent (down 0.2)
