Employment in North Carolina in trouble

remain high, things are looking bleak for a lot of people. The N.C. Budget and Tax Center reports that more 500,000 jobs would have to be created in North Carolina to bring the state back pre-recession employment levels. Almost half the unemployed workers nationwide have been looking for a job for more than six months. Loss of benefits for those who are unemployed will cause hundreds of thousands of people (the recipients and their families) to be in financial trouble at the start of 2012. News-record.com claims that “there’s a persistent and disturbing mythology on the Right that extending unemployment benefits provides a disincentive for people to look for work”. “The suggestion that unemployment benefits make it less likely that people will look for a job is absurd on its face, not only because it’s based on the offensive suggestion that people don’t want to work. It is just not that much money.” Nationwide, the average unemployment benefit comes to roughly a third of what the worker had been earning – a situation which certainly wouldn’t allow these individuals and their families to live comfortably. The Economic Policy Institute reports that the $45 billion cost of extending the federally funded benefits translates into a $72 billion positive economic impact. That means jobs, as many as 560,000 that would be created or saved by an extension of the benefits into 2012, 18,000 of them in North Carolina. It seems that North Carolina is certainly suffering when it comes to levels of unemployment. News-record makes one suggestion here for getting us back on track as we head into the new year – but only time will tell.]]>