With hiring on hiatus: as our annual ranking of the state's top employers shows, job growth is still stunted. Will we get a spurt this year?

• Author: Maley, Frank
• Position: FEATURE

Work, it's been said, saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need. But for nearly two years, the salvation of gainful employment has eluded a large chunk of North Carolina's labor force. The jobless rate slid into single digits last summer, but not by much, and hasn't been below 9.5% since January 2009.

The dip, though welcome, didn't inspire much joy, because it wasn't caused by a surge in hiring. The number of people employed statewide in November was essentially the same as the previous November--an increase of just 0.1%--but the labor force, which includes people without jobs seeking one, shrank. "The unemployment rate has moved down simply because workers have stopped looking for work and therefore aren't counted as unemployed," says Mike Walden, a professor of economics at N.C. State University. "It's not because we've had great job creation--we've had anemic job creation."

The recession and slow recovery have affected the payrolls of companies large and small. Walden says small companies might be suffering more because credit is so tight. Many of them finance expansions with home-equity loans. "With home equity down, that has inhibited small companies. Larger companies have a larger capital base."

But don't expect large companies to drive a big jump in employment anytime soon, says Mark Vitner, Charlotte-based senior economist for Wells Fargo & Co. "The larger employers have made more dramatic cuts, and they've found they can still do everything they need to do with a smaller work force, so they're somewhat reluctant to boost employment all that much."

Some of North Carolina's largest private-sector employers have scaled back a bit. Retail giant Wal-Mart is still by far the state's largest, according to Business North Carolina's annual ranking of the top 100, but it reported a 1% decrease in the number it employs in the state. Three others in the top 10 did, too. Two stayed the same...