Spinning Numbers On Jobs, Housing And Crime
The Charlotte-area unemployment rate shrank slightly in October, to 10.2 percent from 10.6 percent the previous month, while Mecklenburg County’s unemployment dipped to 9.8 percent from 9.9 percent, according to numbers released today by the NC Employment Security Commission.
That sounds like good news until you dig into the numbers, at which point we turn to Jeff Taylor for a reality check. Bottom line: the area’s total labor force shrunk in October (825 worker loss) and total job numbers caved (down 632). This from Meck Deck:
In other words, the only reason the county’s unemployment rate ticked down from a horrid 9.9 percent in September to 9.8 in October is because we lost slightly more workers than jobs.
….
We are not creating jobs. Period. In fact, we had 415,000 jobs in the county back in April and May. Where did those 4000 jobs go and how do we spin that? We are still about 32,000 jobs short of where we were pre-recession in Mecklenburg County alone.
In related news, Charlotte-area home prices continued to slump in September, falling 1 percent from August, according to numbers released today by the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index:
“Another weak report; weaker than last month. The national index is down 1.5% from the third quarter of last year and 15 of 20 cities are down over the last 12 months. Other than Tampa, FL, there are no new lows this month but many analysts will argue that a double dip will be confirmed before Spring. While some of the bad numbers may reflect the end of the government’s tax incentive for first time home-buyers, there are other problems weighing on the housing market.” says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor’s. “The national economy is certainly the number one issue for housing. Additionally, there is a large supply of houses on the market and further, hidden, supply due to delinquent mortgages, pending foreclosures or vacant homes. New construction is running at less than half the pace needed to meet normal demand, so a sustained recovery could be a ways off.”
On a more positive note, Charlotte is a safer place to live these days, or so says CQ Press, a Washington-based publisher of books and directories focusing on government and public policy that annually ranks the safest and most dangerous cities.
Among 400 cities studied, Charlotte rolled in at 118th on the most-dangerous list for 2009, an improvement from the previous year’s ranking of 70th and its 2007 rank of 62.
The rankings are calculated using six crimes categories reported by the FBI – murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft – to develop a national crime index and assign cities a score based on how they compare to an index average. Charlotte, for example, scored 66.25 for its ranking as the 118th most dangerous. St. Louis, by comparison, topped the most-dangerous list with a score of 381.62.
Rounding out the Top 10 most dangerous: Camden, N.J., Detroit and Flint, Mich., Oakland, Richmond, Calif., Cleveland, Compton, Calif., Gary, Ind., and Birmingham.
Other cities with North Carolina pedigree and how they ranked include: Fayetteville (64); Greensboro (85); Winston-Salem (93); Wilmington (97); Durham (117); and Raleigh (236).
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