3. Is North Carolina different in its demography?

Our puzzle could depend in part upon demographic differences between North Carolina and the US on average. Let’s begin with a longer look into the past (courtesy of Demographic Trends in the 20th Century from the US Census Bureau). The 2010 observation is drawn from the Census of that year.

North Carolina began the 20th Century with a much larger share of its population below the age of 15, but by 1970 this gap had disappeared. From 1980 to 2010 the “pre-work” population in North Carolina represented a smaller share of the total than in the US on average, reversing the trend of the first half of the 20th Century. In 2010 that gap had closed once again. (A similar graph for the 65-and-over population shows little difference. In fact, North Carolina had less of its population in that age group until reaching near equality in 2010.)

When we subtract the “pre-work” population (from now on defined as under-16) and the “post-work” population, the remaining “working age” share of the total population is given in Figure 5 below for the period past 1990. The working-age share of the North Carolina population was about two percentage points higher than the US average in 1990, but that working-age advantage of North Carolina had disappeared by 2010. After that time, the two populations were very similar in demography. The downturn in both after 2010 is due to an increase in the 65-and-older share of the population that North Carolina shares with the rest of the US.

Demography may provide a clue to the first half our puzzle. With the larger share of the population of working age, it could have been easier for North Carolina to catch up with the rest of the US. To answer this, we will need to know not what share of the population is of working age but rather what share of the population is actually working (or looking for work). We will turn to that next.