Breaking down job numbers in the east

GREENVILLE, N.C. - For a while now we've been hearing about the economy getting better, but is it really?

As we track the economy tonight, we dig deeper into the numbers.

Ask anyone who is unemployed right now and they will tell you how tough it is to find a new job.
    
But as we found out, more jobs are coming open, just maybe not as quickly as we would like.

"99 percent of what I do as Governor is all about jobs and protecting those we have, growing jobs, reaching out around the world to convince people to come to NC," said NC Governor Bev Perdue.
    
Over the past year, Perdue has been announcing jobs several times a month.
    
“The fact that in NC that we're making the pivot from traditional to very advanced highly technical manufacturing is a turning point for our economy," said Perdue.
    
But for those looking for work, the amount of jobs in North Carolina seem to be few and far between.
    
However, there is hope.
    
9 On Your Side dug into the numbers and found out there have been more jobs created than lost in North Carolina.
    
From December 2010 to December 2011 there was a gain of nearly 30 thousand jobs.
    
“We turned the corner actually last year,” said John Chaffee of the Economic Development Ground, North Carolina’s Eastern Region. He said we’re closing in on job numbers we had back in 2008, “End of 2010 we started to see a little bit of growth.  Now we saw pretty positive growth throughout last year and continuing to see the trend this year.”
    
However, with some of the governor's jobs announcements you have to be careful on how excited you get about them.
    
From January 2011 to January 2012, the governor has announced more than 10,000 new jobs.
    
But, depending on the company, they will be created in up to the next 5 years.
    
That being said, The Roberts Company in Winterville is one of those companies in the governor's announcements and they have added jobs right away.
    
Last year, the governor was at Roberts for the announcement of 29 new jobs over the next three years.
    
In a short time, those positions were filled and right now Roberts is looking for 2 dozen more employees and are looking to add another 100 over the next couple of years.
    
“We're actively hiring, we've been hiring since last year about early second quarter,” said Dave Staskelunas, The Roberts Company. “We expect this to continue for the next two to three years with the growth pattern.”
    
While the job creation is certainly not coming fast enough for the 450,000 unemployed in our state, the experts say we are heading in the right direction.
    
“Generally going relatively well, we're certainly seeing improvements, the unemployment rate is coming down,” said Chaffee, who added, “I’d say by the end of the 4th quarter this year, we'll probably see more of an uptick.”

This job creation business can be a tricky one.
    
Coming up tonight at 11, 9 On Your Side will have a story about how 90 "new" jobs are coming to one area.
    
Although they're "new" jobs, they're coming off of the loss of 120 jobs.