Contrary to how the media portrays our economic situation, for the last two years, the jobs picture in North Carolina has been remarkably stable and highly predictable. We are just living in a new reality.  Eventually Americans are going to catch on to the fact that we have become France, a socialist country with routine, highly predictable double-digit unemployment. The real estate market charade that hid that ended. What you see now is reality. And it is a stable reality — at least for now.

People can be easily confused by the unemployment rate.

The unemployment rate for North Carolina fell from 10.4 percent in October to 10 percent. But what does that mean?

Here’s what John Quinterno told the News & Observer:

“Yes, the unemployment rate did come down, but overall, we had virtually no real job growth in November, and we really haven’t had much job growth the whole year,” said John Quinterno, a principal at research firm South by North Strategies. “So 2011 is shaping up to be basically the fourth straight year of negative or minimal job growth in North Carolina.”

But surely that’s better than the unemployment rate going up, right? Yes and no. The N&O has been more honest of late in reporting the reality behind these unemployment stats, which I applaud. But they still aren’t giving people the full reality.

Quinterno noted that a little more than 20 percent of the decline in unemployed workers in November stemmed from people leaving the labor force, many of whom have done so because they’re discouraged.

That’s a start. But it isn’t the whole picture. To understand that, you’ve got to ignore the unemployment rate and look at the number of people employed.

The good news is that the state added 47,063 jobs in November.

The bad news is that the state is still down 270,985 jobs since November 2007. But still, adding is better than losing jobs, right? Yes.

But the problem is that we’re down 15,000 jobs since July. Basically we’ve spent the year fluctuating between 3.97 million jobs in this state and 4.08 million jobs. Some months we go down. Some months we go up. It’s like a roller coaster ride with little rhyme or reason to it if you look at it on a chart.

Basically it’s a fluctuation of about 100,000 in the total number jobs from the lowest to the highest point. And that’s typical of most years in NC, whether we are in a recession or not. It’s kind of like job statistical noise.

We did the exact same thing last year, when we fluctuated between 3.97 million jobs and 4.07 million jobs. And in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

What does it mean? It means that those 270,000 jobs we shed in 2008 and 2009 aren’t coming back. The shedding stopped in 2010 and the regular pattern returned. The economy and the job picture have stabilized for now and this is the new normal. Not improving, not getting worse. Jobs wise, the way it is is the new reality, following the same old stable patterns.

The only way to change that is to change the structure of our economy both here and in Washington to favor the growth of free enterprise over government.