NC Jobless Rate Now 5%; 7th Consecutive Monthly Decline

North Carolina’s unemployment rate has reached another COVID-19 post-lockdown low, even as overall job growth is somewhat uneven. April’s seasonally adjusted state jobless rate of 5% marks a decline for a seventh consecutive month. That compares to the top pandemic rate of 13.5% last year. Overall non-farm employment actually dropped by 5,800 between March and April. The jobless figures came on Friday, the same day Gov. Roy Cooper issued an executive order reinstating the requirement that next month all unemployment benefit recipients meet work-search rules to receive payments. Cooper had already reinstated work-search requirements for new benefit filers in March.