How The Right Wing Is LYING About the Carolina Miracle - Unemployment Is Not Down - Just Hidden.
Recent research has begun to cast doubt on the idea that North Carolina’s “tough love” policies are actually successful at returning people to the workforce. In a report released last week, the North Carolina Justice Center found that 89 percent of the reduction in unemployment in the state in 2013 was due not to people rousing themselves to go out and look for jobs, but to people leaving the workforce entirely.
Once workers are no longer actively looking for employment, they are no longer considered unemployed for purposes of the unemployment rate. Workers receiving unemployment benefits are required to demonstrate that they are seeking work.
North Carolina’s net job creation for all of 2013 was 13,414 jobs, but the number of people on its unemployment rolls dropped by 124,344 for the year – meaning that more than nine times as many people fell off the unemployment rolls as found new jobs. The state tends to shed jobs in the first six months of the year and to gain them back in the second half, so it’s instructive to look at the numbers more closely.
In the first six months of the year, North Carolina actually lost 27,950 jobs. Nonetheless, during that time, the number of people statewide listed as unemployed declined by about 31,000. This reflected that national trend of declining labor force participation driven by a combination of retirement and people exhausting their unemployment insurance benefits and giving up looking for work.
- See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/02/24/Carolina-Comeback-Masks-Long-Term-Unemployment#sthash.PRvGfHzx.dpuf