NC Jan. jobless rate hits record 11.1 percent

The recession pushed North Carolina's unemployment rate to 11.1 percent in January, a historic high, the Employment Security Commission reported Wednesday. January also marked a year that the state's jobless rate has been stuck above its previous high. January's unemployment rate rose from a revised 10.9 percent in December to the highest level since states started their current calculation method in 1976. Before this recession, the state's peak unemployment rate was 9.7 percent in March 1983, a level topped in February 2009 and exceeded ever since. Experts say the latest unemployment rate is certainly the worst since the Great Depression. "This is pretty bad," said Andrew Brod, an economist at University of North Carolina at Greensboro. "Not since the 1930s have we seen this." Unemployment in January increased by 8,325 workers to more than 500,000.