In North Carolina and across the country, unemployment rates have ticked up a bit in recent months, but most economists say it's a good problem.
It means more jobs are being created and more people are lining up for them. Workers who gave up on the job market after the recession are back in the hunt.
Gov. Pat McCrory has been celebrating the "Carolina Comeback," and he's got something to crow about. There's a lot of new job growth across the state.
Well, across some of the state, but definitely not all of it. In the Triangle and Charlotte, unemployment rates have dropped near or even below the national rate, which stood at 5 percent in March. But in more rural areas, the jobless rate is stubbornly high, sometimes as much as double the national rate - as it is in Laurinburg, for example.
The Carolina Comeback is an urban event. And even some cities haven't shared in it - this city, for example, where we remain mostly dependent on Defense Department spending and unemployment tops 7 percent. Down in Lumberton, it's over 8 percent, as it is in Bladen and Columbus counties.
Three years ago, the General Assembly dropped funding for the N.C. Rural Economic Development Center, a nonprofit charged with rural job creation. The center needed a shakeup. It was wasting money and failing to create significant numbers of jobs, despite state funding that ranged as high as $24 million a year.
The state Commerce Department said it would take over rural economic-development responsibility. It has yet to deliver. New rural jobs are still a rare event, and the ones that pay a good salary and benefits are all but nonexistent, save for the temporary ones converting unused farmland into massive solar-energy farms - a good development for the state's energy sector, but still not a long-term employer.
A story in The News & Observer last week chronicled the resurrection of the Rural Economic Development Center, which is operating with a small fraction of its former budget. It is putting considerable effort into helping entrepreneurs and expanding existing businesses. Improved rural broadband and development of biotechnology are also on its agenda.
That's a start, but it's not enough. The state needs to redouble its efforts to jump-start our rural economy. Our major cities are a success story. We need to create the same outcome for small towns and rural counties that were left floundering since the day the mills shut down.
