April NC Employment Data - things are looking up

Well, after returning from vacation, I see that, on May 22nd, the North Carolina Employment Security Commission released new NC employment data for April (and revised their previously-released numbers for March).

The title of the release is a relatively subdued "Unemployment Rate Remains Unchanged In April: North Carolina Experiences Slight Employment Increase."

I think the data, however, is cause for much more hope in NC than is belied by this rather boring title. See the following graphs, similar to those in my previous post, which tell the story:

Well, it is true that the NC unemployment rate did stay steady at 10.8% - good enough news:


You see, however, that in some other recessions, the employment rate stayed rather high after reaching a peak. The next graph gives reason for optimism:

It seems to be rather rare for this trend, once reversed, to revert to losses again. So, this increase is very significant for NC. This does look like a very strong rebound at this point, and at the least, it means we are not "cliff diving" as quickly as we had been.

So, what is causing the change in the unemployment rate? Is it that people are leaving the labor force?



Not really - it looks like labor force participation increased slightly in April. Is it instead that more people in the population are employed?



This is also turning up - a very good sign. More people are in the labor force, and more people are employed. Here are the last two graphs, combined:



Beautiful. The percent of the NC population that is employed is increasing. A very good sign.