Let’s get an update now on a story we brought you a few weeks ago about job growth in Charlotte. The city ranked number two behind New York City in job growth last year, according to Labor Department data. But while most sectors in Charlotte gained jobs, two saw a decline. For more, Tony Mecia of the Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter joined WFAE’s Marshall Terry for our segment BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: What two categories saw those declines?
Tony Mecia: The two that saw declines in 2025 were categories of information, which lost 400 jobs in the Charlotte region. That's providing information, whether it's on the radio, internet, or newspapers, things like that.
The other big one was manufacturing, which lost about 2,400 jobs in the Charlotte region. Some of the areas that saw the most job creation in the Charlotte region in 2025 were professional and business services, that's things like lawyers, accountants, and other services to businesses that gained about 10,300 jobs. Education and health services — I think we all know that healthcare is growing — that was about 7,000 jobs. Then, leisure and hospitality was another 7,000 jobs.
Terry: What’s the big picture here? What does it say about Charlotte’s economy?
Mecia: When these numbers came out, I think it was cause for celebration. Charlotte always sort of likes to measure itself against other cities. The fact that we're number two in the country for job creation in 2025, even against much larger cities, I think, was cause for celebration. But we're not immune from national trends, and we're seeing some of those trends play out — greater move towards services and away from producing goods. But the job growth is stronger than in a lot of other cities.
Terry: Let’s switch over to parking now. The Ledger recently mapped data on parking tickets all over town and found one hotspot you need to be particularly wary of. Where is it?
Mecia: It probably doesn't surprise people that most of the street parking tickets are written in uptown because uptown and South End are the main areas where you have on-street parking and parking meters. The Ledger looked at more than 200,000 parking tickets written in Charlotte since 2022 and found that the busiest block for parking tickets was the 200 block of West Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
That's right by Romare Bearden Park. There are a couple of big apartment complexes there. The other two blocks that had a lot of tickets were the 100 and 200 block of South Tryon Street near Trade and Tryon.
Terry: Did the data say how much money is generated by parking tickets in Charlotte?
Mecia: Charlotte makes about $3.1 million a year off of parking tickets. I did review the contract between the city and the operator of the parking enforcement program, and there is no incentive in that contract for them to write more tickets.
There's no quota, they're not compensated per ticket, or anything like that. I will say that those collections of citation money, those did increase after the city extended parking hours. It used to be after 6 p.m., you could park for free on the streets. The city moved that back to 10 p.m. Citation revenue went up 55% and the meter revenue went up 36%. So it's hundreds of thousands of dollars more by extending the time of street parking.
Terry: Let’s go from parking to driving, or rather riding, specifically in one of those Waymo driverless vehicles. They’re coming to Charlotte. What can you tell us?
Mecia: These are driverless taxis that are on the streets of other cities, about 10 other cities. This is a company that's owned by Google. They said this week that they are coming to Charlotte. It does sound like they'll be testing for a number of months before they pick up riders. Some people were joking online. They said how is Waymo going to deal with exit 3A to NoDa off of I-277, sort of a notorious intersection. Other people were saying are Charlotte streets really going to be safe with both Waymo and LaMelo Ball on the streets?
Support for BizWorthy comes from the law office of Robertson & Associates.
