As our labor force declines, we've got work to do

Editorial by Fayetteville Observer, September 2, 2015.

Economic reports can be real yawners, lists of numbers that are better sleep aids than action triggers. But we sleep through this one at our own peril.

The unemployment rate has risen this summer in all of North Carolina's metro areas. The city with the highest jobless rate is Rocky Mount, at 9.1 percent. But Fayetteville is right behind, with an 8.2 percent rate. In the Triangle, by contrast, the rate is just a bit above 5 percent.

And while the state's largest metropolitan areas are also the beneficiaries of job growth, we aren't. In Fayetteville, the one-year decline in the labor market was 10 percent. That's a lot of jobs vanishing - most, we would expect, directly or indirectly linked to the Defense Department budget. Jacksonville, home of Camp Lejeune, has the second largest decline in the labor market, at 4 percent.

What's this mean for us? It means that the business of creating new business is really urgent. While the city, the county and the business community are refashioning the economic-development agency charged with luring new business here, the jobs are flowing out the back door. Let's get the remodeled Economic Development Alliance on its feet soon.