Working on it: Both sides arguing about whether or not employment has improved under Obama and McCrory are laboring under a misconconception.

North Carolina's labor market has been improving over the last 21/2 years. From June 2011 to December 2013, employers created about 184,000 new jobs in the state. A separate measure by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics--the household survey--shows an increase of 161,000 employed North Carolinians during that same period. By both measures, the state's growth rate exceeded the, national average.

North Carolina also had one of the largest drops in the standard unemployment rate--from 10.4% in mid-2011 to 6.9% at the end of 2013--in the nation. But job ovation wasn't the only explanation for that drop. The share of working-age North Carolinians employed or looking for work, a statistic known as the labor-force participation rate, declined during that period. Though the phenomenon is national and particularly pronounced in Southeastern states, it's fair to say that our recovery will look comparatively lackluster until labor force participation stops its marked decline and perhaps even rises a bit (although the retirement of baby boomers will put downward pressure on the rate even in the best of times).

Labor-force participation, once an arcane subject for economists and government statisticians, has become a hot political topic. At the national level, Republican critics of President Barack Obama say its decline invalidates his claims about national economic recovery. In North Carolina, (besides are reversed--with Democratic critics questioning Gov. Pat McCrory's claims about a "Carolina Comeback"--but the argument is essentially the same.

If we could get past the partisan posturing and look at the available evidence, we might find some common ground on which to fashion effective solutions. The best place to start is to consider the federal government's broadest measure of the labor market, the U-6 rate. It includes 1) the jobless who are actively looking for work; 2) the discouraged who have stopped looking for work; 3) other "marginally attached" workers who aren't in the job market because they are in the midst of relocating, retraining or shouldering family responsibilities; and 4) those who are working part time but would rather work full time--the underemployed.

Unlike the traditional U-3 unemployment rate, the U-6 isn't produced for every state every month. Instead, the Bureau of Labor Statistics produces 12-month averages each quarter. For the most recent period, calendar year 2013, North Carolina's U-6 rate was 14.7%, including the...