You tell me who expected this new data — besides Meck Deck readers. The notion of a shrinking Charlotte may be becoming a reality.
The April jobs number for Mecklenburg County shows additional job growth, no doubt about it. Around 4000 jobs were added to bring us to almost 415K in the county. The total number of jobless fell from 51K to 46,601 — just as we surmised the other day would be the case. This is good. This means we are now only about 25,000 jobs behind peak employment of 2008.
But.
The labor force reversed several months of growth, growth the professional economists told us would continue as more and more workers re-entered the local work force as more jobs became available. Except it did not happen in April. At 461K workers, the county is idling about 12,000 short of the pre-recession peak.
Now here is the key question going forward: Have those 12K people moved on, or all they just waiting for even more jobs to show up before they re-enter the workforce? It will take a few more months of data to know for sure.
Still, the very possibility that Charlotte is on a permanently altered, lower population, economic growth, and employment track runs counter to everything our so-called local experts expect and are busy planning to address.
And remember, 10 percent unemployment in the county is really nothing to get too excited about.
