The November North Carolina employment report, released at 10 a.m., showed the state’s seaonally adjusted rate falling to 10 percent — still 1.4 percentage points higher than the national number. (PDF here.)
Of interest in political circles, especially among the Left, is public sector employment — primarily in education. Democrats have been claiming that the balanced budget passed by the General Assembly (over Gov. Bev Perdue’s veto) would cost anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 jobs in state and local government, the lion’s share of the losses by teachers and university faculty.
The data have failed to show that, and continue failing to show that.
The Current Employment Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (pulled from the Division of Employment Security’s website) shows that from November 2010 to November 2011, the unadjusted raw count of local government education jobs fell by 5,100 — from 227,600 to 222,500. Those are all local education jobs. There’s no way of knowing how many of them are teachers (some surely are), but it’s nowhere near the scary numbers being tossed around earlier this year.
As for higher education? The losses were much smaller: From 109,700 last November to 108,200 this year, a loss of 1,500. Again, that’s all higher ed, including universities and community colleges, faculty, staff, administration, etc.
A chart with all these numbers, pulled from the website, is below.
Also of interest: The number of unadjusted jobs in local education fell by between 5,000 and 8,000 year-over-year beginning in January, before the budget passed. This suggests any public-sector retrenchment may have begun before the 2010 election, and certainly before the 2011-12 budget became law, for what it’s worth.
As they say, you can look it up.
