If They Only Knew | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This article appeared on John Hood's daily column in the Carolina Journal, which, because of Author / Publisher Hood, is linked to the John Locke Foundation.

    RALEIGH  -  I've devoted several recent columns to the subject of unemployment insurance (UI) and North Carolina's labor market. That's because the topic is an important and timely one, both within the state and outside it.

    Last July, North Carolina became the first state to exit the federal government's extended-benefits program. Six months later, at the start of 2014, the extended-benefits program ceased in the rest of the country. President Obama and some politicians and analysts want to renew the program for at least some of 2014. Others think extended benefits are no longer a wise use of taxpayer money.

    Given the stakes, policy analysts across the spectrum have focused intently on the labor-market statistics in North Carolina, which show a dramatic drop in the unemployment rate (from 8.8 percent in June to 6.9 percent in December, more than twice the drop the nation as a whole experienced). I wish these analysts' intense focus on the issue had been accompanied by an extensive knowledge of how the statistics were produced and what they meant.

    For example, if they truly knew what they were talking about, these analysts would not be claiming that North Carolina's exit from extended benefits caused the state's civilian labor force to contract. They would know that the apparent decline in North Carolina's labor force began in February 2013, months before the end of extended benefits.

    They would also know that the labor force count also began to decline markedly in other Southeastern states around the same time, even though these states retained extended benefits. Indeed, since they would know that Georgia's decline was about the same as North Carolina's, and Tennessee was actually larger, they would never have been foolish enough to blame the labor force decline on North Carolina's unique UI policy.

    Here's something else an informed analyst of North Carolina's labor market trends would know: the decline in the labor force from June 2013 to December 2013 was not large enough to be statistically significant. According to BLS, because of the small size of the household-survey sample in North Carolina, "the approximate thresholds for statistically significant changes ... over a 6-month period (using the change from June-December 2013) are as follows: 68,000 for civilian labor force; 61,000 for employment; 32,000 for unemployment; and 0.7 for unemployment rate. So, our official estimates indicate that unemployment (both in terms of the level and rate) in North Carolina has gone down significantly since June, but neither the labor force nor employment level changes were significant."

    The other BLS survey that generates labor-market statistics, the payroll survey, has a much larger sample size. Thus its margin of sampling error is lower. According to the payroll survey, North Carolina employers added 51,400 jobs from June to December, a statistically significant increase. Moreover, that rate of increase (1.3 percent over six months) exceeded the national average for the same period (0.8 percent).

    North Carolina's job-creation trend also exceeds the national average over the longer run. From June 2011 to December 2013, the state added about 184,000 new jobs, a growth rate about 13 percent above average.

    There was, in fact, one recent period during which North Carolina lagged the nation. That was the first six months of 2013, when we added only 13,100 new jobs, a growth rate of just 0.3 percent. It was an outlier. North Carolina's job creation surpassed the national average during 2012 and during the last six months of 2013, as I've already indicated. Unfortunately for the Left's flimsy narrative, Jan-June 2013 was the "wrong" period for the state to underperform, since it preceded the end of extended benefits.

    To sum up, then, here's what the available evidence tell us about North Carolina's July 2013 exit from extended benefits: 1) it was followed by a large, statistically significant drop in both the count and rate of unemployment; 2) it was followed by a statistically significant increase in filled jobs as measured by the payroll survey.

    Other claims, about household employment and labor force participation, lack statistical significance. Does that mean liberal editorialists will stop making them?

    You already know the answer to that question.