Catawba County Labor Force below the 70,000 person critical point

70,000 people in the Civilian Labor Force is the critical point that I have talked about in the past. We fell below that mark in December for the first time since these statistics become publicly available in January 1990. In January 1990, the Labor Force in Catawba County stood at 70,308 people. Today, the numbers released show the Labor Force is down to 69,241 people. The Labor Force has fallen by nearly 3,000 people since January 2014. At the same time we are being sold a bill of goods that the unemployment rate is 5.4%, down 2% since August 2014. So they are telling us that unemployment is down 2%, when we haven't seen any influx of industry in these past 4 months.

Economic Research - Federal Reserve St. Louis - Catawba County, NC

By the numbers, we have 65,502 people employed in Catawba County. In March 2012, there were 65,221 people employed in Catawba County and the unemployment rate was said to be 10.9%. So the unemployment rate has been cut in half and yet we basically have the same number of people employed. Does that make sense?

I believe that we will be seeing soon that we are once again losing population in the area.

Unemployment Spreadsheet for February 2015 - latest data from December 2014

Article below by Gallup that is relevant to this issue:

The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment - Gallup - Jim Clifton - February 3, 2015