Craven County labor market still recovering after pandemic emergency
While Craven County’s labor workforce numbers have rebounded to near pre-pandemic levels in recent months, some businesses are still struggling to fill job vacancies.
Out of a workforce of 41,659, Craven County’s labor force participation rate in June 2022 was 60.5%, a slight rise from 59.7% at the beginning of the year. The June number was just below the county’s participation rate of 61.3% in January 2020, just prior to the beginning of the COVID-19 shutdown, according to statistics from the N.C. Department of Commerce
The number dropped to 55.10% in 2020, when COVID-19 was at its peak.
Craven County’s employment to population rate, which measures the proportion of a country's working age population that is employed, has also risen steadily since the early days of the pandemic, The rate stood at 58.5% in June, according to NCDC, a gain of 1.5% since January.
By comparison, the county’s employment to population rate was 59.1% in January 2020 before quickly falling to 51.5% the following May.
Though Craven County’s unemployment rate remains low, the numbers are slowly ticking upward since reaching a record low of 3.0% in December 2021, according to numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The unemployment rate in Craven County was 4.1% in June, still a far cry from the county’s record high unemployment rate of 11.90% that was reached in April 2020.
Zoom in to the New Bern statistics, and the numbers are slightly better. New Bern’s June unemployment rate was 3.7%, with 12,225 residents holding down jobs out of a total labor force of 12,701.
An aging population and educational requirements are driving workforce changes
While local employment numbers are on the rise, a quick drive around New Bern reveals sign after sign declaring ‘Help Wanted’ at local businesses.
According to Phil Prescott, business services representative for the Eastern Carolina Workforce Development Board, the decline in job candidates is due, in part, to an aging and declining population, mainly in Craven County's rural communities. Prescott said the trend was pronounced even before the pandemic.
Craven County had a population of 101,104 at the end of 2021. That number decreased by 1,680 since 2016 and is expected to fall by an additional 1,074 over the next five years, according to data from the Economic Modeling Specialist Inc.
Over that same time span, an additional 33,480 residents are expected to retire.
"There's a lot of retirement and not as many people populating and repopulating our region," Prescott said. "If everyone decided to go back to work, we still don't have enough to feed the demand that we have."
The numbers aren’t all bad news for the local job market, however. The EMS data shows that job availability numbers have risen to near pre-pandemic levels. In 2019 there were 50,455 jobs available in the county, a number that dropped to 49,078 in 2020.
The job numbers rose this year to 49,299. According to the EMS data, locally available jobs are predicted to stay below 50,000 until 2026.
Education is also becoming an increasingly important factor in the local job market. According to information from the nonprofit myFutureNC, while 67% of jobs in North Carolina now require high-quality credentials or postsecondary degrees, fewer than half of North Carolinians ages 25-44 meet those qualifications.
The projected growth in North Carolina occupations requiring advanced educational attainments, meanwhile, is expected to outpace growth in jobs requiring only a high school degree by as much as two times by 2028. Broadening this predicament is that since 2016 college enrollments and the availability of skilled workers within the labor market have seen a striking decline.
According to projections, if North Carolina stays on the current trajectory, by 2030 the state will fall short by at least 400,000 individuals with the skills needed to fill the projected employment needs.
New Bern's Eastern Carolina Workforce Development Board recently announced the OurFutureENC educational collaborative. ECWDB is heading up the collaboration along with its partners in community colleges and school systems. OurFutureENC’s mission is to close the attainable skills gap, especially for first-generation students and students from low-income backgrounds.
The Eastern Carolina Workforce Development Board's goal is to ensure that students have the information, resources, and opportunities they need to prepare for college and to obtain credentials aligning with local business needs to give them a competitive edge, according to Executive Director Tammy Childers.
“The Eastern Carolina Workforce Development Board along with community partners will advance the connection between helping job seekers to acquire the skills that are necessary for employment in our current economic growth,” Childers said.
Reporter Todd Wetherington can be reached by email at wwetherington@gannett.com. Please consider supporting local journalism by signing up for a digital subscription.
This article originally appeared on Sun Journal: Craven County labor market still recovering after pandemic emergency
