Becoming a broken record, folks. The December jobless rate for Mecklenburg County edged up to 11.2 percent from 11 percent in November. The overall Charlotte metro area rate jumped to 12.1 percent from 11.9 percent. Overall the region lost 2800 jobs during the month, according to state figures. For the year the region lost 35,900 jobs.
And yet we still have a $9.5b. transit plan which requires 100,000 workers Uptown to make sense.
Mecklenburg also has the distinction of being the only county in the state to pay out over $500m. in unemployment benefits for the year, $511m. to be exact. Next highest is Wake County with $377m. Put another way, over 10 percent of all the $4.8b. in unemployment benefits paid out by the state went to Mecklenburg.
Don’t expect Raleigh to forget that anytime soon.
