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Consultant: Rocky Mount's lower labor-force participation driven by demographics and industrial mix, not lower participation within age groups
Summary
An economist told city and partnership leaders that Rocky Mount’s below‑state labor‑force participation is largely explained by a smaller share of prime‑age residents and lower educational attainment, and by an industrial mix concentrated in manufacturing rather than fast‑growing professional and information sectors.
Dr. Flor Mutavi, an economist presenting to Rocky Mount leaders at the briefing, said the city’s lower overall labor‑force participation stems mainly from who lives there and the area’s industry mix, not from a general unwillingness to work.
Mutavi said the metropolitan area’s share of residents aged 25–44 — often called "prime‑age" workers — is about 23% versus roughly 26% for North Carolina. He said Rocky Mount’s overall labor‑force participation rate is about 59.5% compared with about 63% statewide. "It's not because individuals in those age bands actually participate more or less. It's driven by the demographics, by education attainment," Mutavi said.
Why this matters: prime‑age residents and educational attainment strongly affect how many people are available to fill jobs, Mutavi said. He showed labor‑force participation by educational level — roughly a 10‑point gap between people with a college degree and those with only a high‑school diploma — and noted that Rocky Mount has a smaller share of residents with college degrees than the state average.
Mutavi also discussed industrial composition. Rocky Mount has a higher concentration of manufacturing jobs and a substantially smaller share of professional and business services and information‑sector jobs than the statewide economy. Those faster‑growing sectors have driven much of North Carolina’s employment growth in the past decade; their relative absence in Rocky Mount helps explain slower job growth in the metro.
The presentation included a shift‑share decomposition that separates: (1) how much area growth tracks statewide trends, (2) how much is driven by sector performance, and (3) the regional share unique to the area. On worker origins, Mutavi said employer‑employee match data through mid‑2023 show only about 22% of newly filled positions in the metro were filled by workers previously employed inside the Rocky Mount metro; roughly 75–80% came from elsewhere in North Carolina or beyond.
Mutavi flagged a persistent GDP gap: real GDP for Nash and Edgecombe counties dropped in earlier years and had not returned to prior levels by the most recent data in his slide set. He also showed a gender decomposition indicating that much of the net decline in local employment over the last 15 years has been driven by fewer women employed in the metro, an observation he said warrants further study.
In the following Q&A, leaders asked about wages, remote work, childcare availability, and whether the region lacks job openings or the local workforce to fill them. Mutavi said wage data and occupation‑level analysis would be included in the fuller report and that credentialing requirements — for example, strict degree requirements for occupations that could be filled by trained candidates — may be part of the mismatch between available workers and posted jobs. He said some job growth appears to be met by "importing" workers from outside the metro.
Looking ahead, Mutavi said local strategy should combine understanding demographics, raising educational attainment/skill levels, and considering occupational pathways (not only industry categories) when designing workforce and attraction strategies.
