ECONOMY

It’s a quirky fact about all three of the most recent directors of the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute: We all came, not from large urban centers, but from small, rural communities. Jim Clay, director from 1979 to 1984, was from Crum, W.Va. Bill McCoy (director 1985-2001) hailed from Ekron, Ky. And me? My friends are […]

People in Mecklenburg County are feeling the effects of the economic recovery, according to results from the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute’s 2013 Annual Survey. Most people surveyed said their economic situation is getting better, in higher numbers than at any time since 2010. They’re optimistic for the future, too. The survey of 400 Mecklenburg County […]

Population growth in Charlotte has always come with plenty of costs, but rising incomes and prosperity were part of the expected returns. Yet it turns out that during the recent recession and economic downturn, as population growth continued, economic growth sputtered. Charlotte experienced a long period of population and income growth through much of the […]

The last five years have been among the most challenging in the nearly 250-year history of Charlotte. The Great Recession erased the mythology that our community was invulnerable to the vicissitudes of national economic fortunes. Home construction, property values, business investment, and community philanthropy plunged downward at rates not seen since the Depression. Unemployment rates […]

The last five years have been among the most challenging in the nearly 250-year history of Charlotte. The Great Recession erased the mythology that our community was invulnerable to the vicissitudes of national economic fortunes. Home construction, property values, business investment, and community philanthropy plunged downward at rates not seen since the Depression. Unemployment rates […]

The Revenue Act of 1921 put the Tar Heel State on a then-new path by replacing its old and failing state property tax with the modern income tax. In the Emergency Revenue Act of 1933, as incomes and tax revenue sank into the depths of the Great Depression, state policymakers established the retail sales tax […]

Below are more specific details about the differing tax-restructuring proposals from two N.C. senators. Neither proposal is likely to be adopted exactly as presented, because amendments and changes are likely as the measures move through will the N.C. General Assembly. Clodfelter proposal Details of the tax plan, Senate Bill 394, proposed by N.C. Sen. Dan […]

The unemployment insurance reform bill, which Gov. Pat McCrory signed in February, cuts benefits to the jobless in two ways. It reduces the amount of weekly benefits for some of the state’s unemployed and the total number of weeks that benefits are paid. The way these benefit changes are structured will cause additional federal cuts […]

“In 1965, if you had a good back and a good alarm clock, you could make a good living in Milwaukee,” Mayor Tom Barrett told a recent Raleigh conference, because of the strength, at the time, of that city’s manufacturing sector. Although rural Stanly County is very different, that Milwaukee attitude was also the prevailing […]

Local perceptions may not have caught up with the new reality in the Charlotte region’s manufacturing economy. Even before the recession began in 2007, declines in the textile and furniture industries were changing the structure of local employment. As the downturn continued, counties that depended less on textile and furniture manufacturing lost fewer jobs. The […]