You have to go back almost five years — to March 2005 — to find the last time there were fewer than 403,000 total jobs in Mecklenburg County. Yet that is the number the latest state figures provide for the county.

The January employment total of 402,824 jobs is also down a little over 2000 jobs since December, dashing hopes that employment would pick up after the first of the year. This also means that since January 2008, the county has shed about 36,000 jobs.

The other part of the equation, of course, is the size of the labor force. In March 2005 the county labor force stood at a tad under 423,000 making for an unemployment rate of 5.1 percent. The latest employment rate is 11.7 percent because the labor force has grown to 456,300 since then. However, this masks another important trend, namely that the current labor force has actually shrunk from its all-time highs in 2008.

Recall as the financial meltdown hit and jobs were lost, our local “experts” told us that our unemployment rates were being compounded by job seekers still coming to Charlotte — which was supposed to a be a good sign of sorts. OK. In October 2008 the county labor force hit an all-time high of almost 473,000. But since then it has trended downward, now off 3.6 percent since then. Had it remained the same official unemployment would stand at 15 percent.

In fact, unless we assume those workers who were here in October 2008 have all moved away, I think that little exercise tells us that the actual unemployment rate in Mecklenburg County is somewhere between 12 and 15 percent.

I could drag in other data points — that the Triangle continues to be in better shape than the Charlotte area, that CLT still lags the state unemployment average, that Meck received $23.6m. in unemployment benefits in January — but I think the notion of 15 percent unemployment in Charlotte pretty much frames the matter properly.

I guess I should mention that the Charlotte region overall created a whopping 200 jobs while losing 12,800 but that seems too vague. Instead, I’ll leave you with a hard number: 441,344.

That was the all-time high point for jobs in Mecklenburg, hit in April 2008. Were we to suddenly and completely start reversing the job loss trend and instead begin adding jobs at the net rate of 250 per month, we’d get back to that number long about November 2012.