Experts discuss regional unemployment trends
While people in western North Carolina are indeed returning to work, compared to the initial drastic dip with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic approximately a year ago, experts familiar with the local job market say the picture is more complicated.
According to the May labor market overview published by the Southwestern Workforce Development Board, the region – which includes Graham, Cherokee, Swain, Clay, Macon, Jackson and Haywood counties – unemployment across the region is down one percent when compared with the previous report.
The current region-wide unemployment rate is 4.5 percent, with the statewide number currently at 4.6 percent. Both numbers are lower than the current 6.2 percent national unemployment rate.
However, despite the overall better picture, Graham County’s unemployment rate remains the highest in the region at 6.8 percent. The number is the lowest it has been since the January 2021 numbers, when the county showed 9.2 percent unemployment.
An annual need
“The irony is that we have businesses beating down our doors saying ‘please help us find employees, please help us find employees,’” said Graham County Economic Development Director Sophia Paulos.
She said other counties in the Southwestern region were also seeing a need for employees, and also emphasized that it was not solely because of stimulus checks and higher unemployment benefits due to the pandemic.
“This is a problem that our region faces every time, this time of year,” Paulos said. “When you’re looking at it compared to the country, because a lot of our comers is driven by and around the tourism cycle, for the last 5-10 years, the employers are beating down our doors.”
She said this year had been a little bit worse than normal in Graham County.
Last March’s Graham County numbers showed 5.9 percent unemployment.
Childcare issues
Both Paulos – and Tri-County Community College Director of Economic and Workforce Development Paul Worley – listed childcare as among the primary reasons why many are struggling to return to work even as the world learns how to coexist with COVID-19 and more people are vaccinated against the virus.
Worley listed the lack of childcare as the main issue preventing people from returning to work locally.
“Because of COVID – and the school schedule – that’s keeping people from going back to work,” Worley said. “That’s kind of hurting more than anything.”
He said much of Cherokee and Clay County industry was also hurting for workers in addition to the tourism sector.
The most recent unemployment figure for Cherokee County was 4.8 percent for March 2021, down from 6.1 percent for December 2020. The figure for March 2020 was 4.5 percent. In Clay County, the numbers were 4.6 percent unemployed in March 2021, compared to 6.1 percent in December 2020.
The county is at the same level as it was in March 2020.
“If you’re looking at childcare, which is if you can even find someone to take care of your child, you’re looking at $100 to $150 a week, so if you’ve got two kids at home you’ve just spent the majority of that you would make somewhere just paying for childcare,” Worley said.
However, Worley said with more students returning to school in-person, childcare could become less of an issue.
Paulos explained that even in instances when someone was able to take care of a relative of friend’s children, it could still prevent some people from being able to work and support their families when the need arose.
“Nationally and regionally, we saw women disengaged from the workforce at a significantly higher rate than men as a result of COVID-19, and that was because they’re usually the (child) caretakers, and frequently they make less money, so if one person’s going to have to stay home, oftentimes it’s the woman,” said Paulos.
“If you work at Walmart, Ingles or even Harrah’s for that matter, it’s really difficult to get hours if you tell them that you can only work two days a week. I would say that’s actually one of the biggest problems we have is the lack of access to affordable childcare. It’s probably the biggest problem we have with workforce in western North Carolina.”
Paulos said the childcare issue had been ongoing for some time, but was exacerbated by the pandemic.
“How can we expect parents to work to their full potential if there’s not somebody minding the kids,” Paulos said.
Worley also emphasized that there was ample time between the numbers being released and the time period that they are released for, and that the data may not represent the most current trends.
“The other part that you have to go back and look at is the unemployment numbers that we had in January, we were still in the bad part of COVID,” Worley said. You had all that Thanksgiving and Christmas stuff that came through, so you had a lot of people being affected by COVID.
“Not only were they not working, but there was a lot of fear out there. People weren’t going to work because they were afraid they were going to get it.”
He said that he thought the availability of COVID-19 vaccines would also encourage more people to return to work, as would a need for health insurance.
“(The vaccine) has already eliminated a lot of the fear,” Worley said.
Widespread issue
Worley also said many people crossed county and state lines to work in the region. He referred to the region as a “geographic bowl,” with a gorge on each end and mountain chains surrounding it.
“You always have to remember that when you’re looking at workforce in western North Carolina,” Worley explained. “Our workforce is coming from Cherokee, Clay and Graham counties, but it’s also coming from Towns, Union and Fannin counties in Georgia and Polk County, Tenn.”
He explained that even as some major industrial players left the region, jobs were still coming to the area and workers were still needed.
“In Cherokee County, 20 percent of our workforce is based on manufacturing,” Worley said. “You used to have a strong manufacturing base in Clay County, but they lost one of their major employers last March when they lost Southwire, but you’re seeing so much expansion coming from the other manufacturers that it’s absorbing all of that and actually creating more jobs.”
Paulos said that in some cases, businesses also needed to catch up to the current cost of living to attract more potential employees. She also spoke to a continued need for workforce training and support of businesses that were already in place.
“We need to stop thinking about what we can do to catch the whale, and start thinking about what we can do to support the small business owners who are really the ones propping us up,” Paulos said.
She said the situation was beginning to improve a little bit.
“Over the last several years, folks have done a much better job of working collaboratively, and that’s created a lot efficiencies,” Paulos said. “There are good people on economic development. I think that our region could use some more people on it, because we definitely need more people doing the work of economic development in the region. Most folks don’t realize it, but of the seven county region, only four of the counties have economic developers now.
“In all sincerity, we need about 6-12 more people doing the work that Paul and I do.”
Statewide, the lowest unemployment rate for March was in Watauga County at 3.4 percent. The highest was 8.9 percent, in Scotland County.