"North Carolina’s economy generally is more volatile than the national economy, meaning we have bigger ups but also bigger downs," Dr. Walden says. "We really had a severe recession here in 2001 followed by a very, very slow anemic recovery, especially in the job market in 2002 and 2003.

"All of those years, we grew slower than the national economy," he explains. "But the good news is that in the last two years North Carolina’s economy has bounced back so strongly that we are now growing faster than the nation.

"We are growing faster in terms of our economic output -- the goods and services that we are producing -- and very important for households, we are growing faster in the job market. We are now leading the nation in terms of job growth.

"I think this is all the more impressive," Walden concludes, "given the massive changes that are going on internally in the North Carolina economy."