Unemployment has climbed above 10 percent in North Carolina for the first time since September 2010, and left-of-center politicians and pundits are blaming the new Republican-written state budget.
John Hood suggests those critics might want to think again.
For instance, the ESC used seasonal adjustments in July 2010 to show a government-sector job loss of 27,300. In July 2009, the ESC reported that the government sector lost 21,300 jobs. “In July 2011, the ESC reports a seasonally adjusted loss of 11,000 government-sector jobs,” Hood said. “Does that mean the government sector actually fared better this year than in the past two years? I don’t know. Neither does Gov. Perdue.”
Digging into the raw data leads to even more confusion, Hood said. The ESC’s unadjusted data for “Local Government Educational Services” show 132,300 jobs in July, down from 202,300 jobs in June. The same data source shows 129,400 jobs in that sector in July 2010, down from 209,400 jobs in June 2010.
“The raw data suggest North Carolina had more people employed in local government educational services this year than last year, and the drop from June to July was less severe this year compared to 2010,” Hood said. “Perhaps the ESC’s adjustments should tell a different story, but it’s unlikely that Gov. Perdue and her allies know enough about the numbers to make educated statements about the data. Perdue certainly had no way of turning this ESC press release into evidence of the Republican budget causing the sky to fall in North Carolina.”
