South By North Strategies, Ltd.

North Carolina Economic News

Two weekend news stories about North Carolina’s economy featured the research of South by North Strategies, Ltd.

From a story in The Winston-Salem Journal about President Obama’s recent visit to North Carolina …

Although the job market has stabilized in recent months, unemployment has settled at an extremely high level,” said John Quinterno, a principal at South by North Strategies Ltd., a research company focused on economic and social policy. “Such high levels of unemployment and long-term unemployment are limiting the speed and strength of the recovery,” Quinterno said.

From a story in The Charlotte Observer about falling wages in Mecklenburg County …

“A lot of folks are essentially losing ground,” said John Quinterno of South by North Strategies Ltd., a Chapel Hill economic research firm. “We’re in a situation now where we have such high levels of unemployment. That really tends to put a brake on wages.”

A Controversial Figure

From a profile of U.S. Treasury Sec. Timothy Geithner in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly …

Geithner doesn’t breed nuance of opinion. You’re either for him or against him, and popular sentiment leans strongly toward the latter. But it’s possible to view him as someone who was indispensable in halting the crisis (his understanding of Wall Street’s psychology was particularly valuable) while still doubting whether someone so steeped in the institutional cultures of Washington and Wall Street has the necessary distance to direct their reform.
…
The angry uprising that stopped the Obama agenda in its tracks is part of the steep political cost of following the Geithner Plan—a cost that seems to keep rising, even as the fiscal cost continues to fall. Even the most prominent indicator of recovery, the robust stock market, has come to seem a curse, by reinforcing in the public mind how quickly Wall Street has recovered while everyone else is left to endure. And Obama can’t really tout all that he’s done without also drawing attention to his gentle treatment of Wall Street.
…
Depending on your point of view, this is either a cruel or a fitting irony. By placing his chips on Geithner a year ago, Obama was betting that a strategy of growth under any circumstances was the right move, and that devising new rules was best left to insiders.

Around the Dial – April 2

Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:

• Paul Krugman teaches “financial reform 101.”
• FiveThirtyEight.com debunks bad recovery math.
• Justin Fox asks how to take economics debates back from economists.
• Dennis Lockhart of the Atlanta Fed discusses recovery prospects.

National Employment in March

The national employment report for March points to a labor market that is adding some jobs but few permanent positions. Last month, employers added 162,000 more payroll jobs than they eliminated. Many of these positions, however, were temporary ones, either in the private sector or with the U.S. Census Bureau.

In March, the nation’s employers added 162,000 more payroll positions than they eliminated. Gains were concentrated in professional and business services, primarily temporary help services (+40,000), health care (+27,000), and government (+39,000). Losses occurred within the financial activities (-21,000) and information (-12,000) industries.

The job growth experienced in March was too modest to reduce the country’s supply of idle labor, as reflected in the household data released today. In March, 15 million Americans – 9.7 percent of the labor force –  were jobless and actively seeking work. Proportionally more adult male workers were unemployed than female ones (10 percent vs. 8 percent). Similarly, unemployment rates were higher among Black (16.5 percent) and Hispanic workers (12.6 percent) than among White ones (8.7 percent). The unemployment rate among teenagers was 26.1 percent.

Click here to read South by North Strategies’ analysis of the March employment report.

Strengthening State Economic Development Systems

Recent years have seen a rapid escalation in state economic development spending: spending that in 2008 totaled at least $10 billion. Given the scale of public spending, some state leaders have begun to inquire about the effectiveness of economic development activities and just who receives the benefits. Instead of relying upon old assumptions, some leaders are urging their states to think more carefully about the public benefit and the fundamental link between skill formation and job creation.

To encourage this transition, The Working Poor Families Project, a national initiative to strengthen state policies and programs, asked South by North Strategies, Ltd to identify promising ways of  better orienting state economic development systems around an education and skills agenda that reflects the economic needs of low income families. The report, entitled Strengthening State Economic Development Systems: A Framework for Change is available through the project’s web site.