http://66.225.205.104/SO20091201.mp3
After two straight months of small dips in the Charlotte region's unemployment rate, the number inched up in October. WFAE's Simone Orendain has more: The October jobless rate in the Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord metro area was 12 percent. That's up from 11.8 percent in September. Rick Kaglic is a regional economist with the Federal Reserve's Charlotte office. He says as the battered economy creeps toward recovery, there's a good chance more jobs will be lost and unemployment will tick upward. "But I think the bulk of the pain is now behind us. And I think we begin a slow climb out of the trough probably in the first or second quarter of 2010," he says. Kaglic says the economic recovery may not include much job growth. But there is growth in productivity thanks to credit freeing up in the financial sector, increases in housing and auto sales and exports. Mecklenburg County unemployment in October was at 11.1 percent. The jobless rate in Gaston County was 13.4 percent and in Cabarrus County, it was 11.7. The October figures show the Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton metro area had the state's highest unemployment rate of 14.5 percent.