TRIAD – Better, but still not nearly close to good enough.

That was the assessment from analysts Friday after a report showed that jobless rates fell across the region and state for the second straight month in April.

Jobless levels decreased in 99 of the state’s 100 counties from March to April, which follows unemployment rates for all counties dropping from February to March, according to the N.C. Employment Security Commission.

“The positive news in the April county data is that there has been an increase in the number of workers employed throughout the state,” said ESC Chairwoman Lynn Holmes. However, Holmes and other analysts acknowledge that jobless levels remain too high in the wake of the recession.

“The news is tempered by the fact that more than half of the counties still have unemployment rates over the unadjusted rate of 10 percent,” Holmes said.

The city of High Point’s jobless rate slipped from 11.1 percent in March to 10.5 percent in April, the ESC reports. Also, the city unemployment rate is below the level of 11 percent in April last year.

Davidson County, which has one of the highest jobless levels in the Piedmont, had its unemployment rate fall from 13.1 percent in March to 12.1 percent last month. Randolph County’s rate fell from 11.8 percent to 10.5 percent, while Guilford County’s rate dropped from 11.1 percent to 10.4 percent, according to ESC figures.

Even with the decline last month, jobless rates locally and statewide are at levels far above traditional averages.

“Long-term unemployment is still an epidemic problem in North Carolina,” said Alexandra Forter Sirota, a policy analyst with the N.C. Justice Center’s Budget & Tax Center in Raleigh.

The median length of unemployment was 16.5 weeks in 2009, up from seven weeks at the beginning of the recession in late 2007, Sirota said.

Another reflection of the impact of the recession is the regional jobless rate, said Robert Ware, ESC regional manager out of Greensboro.

The jobless rate for the Piedmont Triad was 5.3 percent in March 2008 as the impact of the recession began to take hold. In March of this year, the regional jobless rate reached 11.4 percent, Ware said.

pjohnson@hpe.com | 888-3528

By the numbers

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The number of people with jobs increased during April by 30,780 workers to 4.09 million. The number of unemployed North Carolinians decreased last month by 42,446 to 455,013.

Jobless rates decreased from March to April in all of the state’s 14 major metropolitan areas for the second straight month. However, 63 counties continued to have unemployment rates at 10 percent or higher in April.

Source: N.C. Employment Security Commission