Recent data released by the North Carolina Department of Commerce demonstrates that all North Carolina counties saw lower unemployment rates in April 2022 than in April 2021. The same is true in South Carolina, and this trend reflects the tightening of the labor market over the past year. The largest drop in the Carolinas during this period was in Rowan County, which saw a 3% drop in the unemployment rate. The Charlotte Region’s unemployment rate was 3.2% in April 2022, about a 1.7% drop since April 2021, and the exact same level as in April 2019. Because the unemployment data is not adjusted for seasonal factors, it is best to compare year-over-year rather than month-over-month.
The labor market has tightened over the past year as employers have struggled to find enough workers to keep up with demand. Part of the tight labor market is due to lower labor participation rates. Nationally, the labor force participation rate (share of civilian population working or looking for work) has still not fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels. While it has slowly climbed since bottoming out in April 2020, the labor force participation rate in May 2022 was 62.3% compared to 63.4% in February 2020.
Labor force participation rates are not available at the county or metro level, but both Carolinas have lower labor force participation rates than pre-pandemic. The labor force participation rate in the Charlotte Region may not have fully recovered, but there were about 60,000 more workers in the labor force in April 2022 than in April 2021, and about 70,000 more workers than in April 2019. Despite this growth, the region’s labor force is about 20,000 less than where it could have expected to be if it had continued growing at 2% annually, as it did on average between 2015-2019.
While the labor market may cool over the course of the year, today it remains worker friendly as job openings remain near record levels and layoffs are at their lowest levels on record. While the competition for talent is fierce nation-wide, the Charlotte Region is in a relatively strong position given its talent pipeline. There are nearly 15,000 university graduates annually in the region and about 31,000 people moving to the region every year.
