NC Economy, State Revenues Blast Through Pandemic Panic Expectations

RALEIGH – When it comes to economy and state budget, North Carolina is faring much better than feared when projections were made last year amid the fear and shutdown waves of Pandemic Panic.

A LOT BETTER.

In fact, the revenues were more than $4 billion more than projections made in May of 2020. The General Assembly’s Fiscal Research Division made those projections for state revenue collections to account for the massive dislocations, disruptions, and dictates coming with the reactionary policies of in response COVID-19. The new report, however, describes out much we outperformed those projections, and why:

The report notes the obvious, that more than $30 billion in federal relief funds to North Carolina individuals and businesses helps take the pressure off of the General Assembly. As it turns out, our state doesn’t have printing presses or subscribe to Modern Monetary Theory, but we digress.

Beyond that, the recovery of much of the North Carolina economy is owed to the resilience (and perhaps rebelliousness) of communities, small-business owners, and workers despite the best efforts of Governor Roy Cooper to shut them down.

The report describes that recovery as ‘K-shaped’ (seriously), as it is incredibly uneven owing to the arbitrary and specific nature of King Cooper’s executive shutdown edicts and social distancing restrictions that have consigned some businesses to forced failure and carved out untouched markets and demand for others. Working remotely under lockdown orders is also easier for certain employees to achieve, unburdened, while other sectors like restaurants faced massive layoffs at the first signs of forced closures.

The surplus, and pockets of economic resiliency and growth overall, clearly demonstrate the suffering that exists is much more to do with the restrictive diktats of Governor Cooper arbitrarily and unevenly burdening select groups of businesses and employees.

The resiliency is significant, too. Overall revenues for the fiscal year are now projected to be more than 15 percent higher than last fiscal year:

Read the full report here.