Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Not directly. These data for North Carolina and states come out with a great lag, but we do have some indirect evidence. The Federal Reserve each quarter puts out something called the 'beige book,' where they actually go around and talk to people. They don't collect a lot of information. They talk to you and get anecdotal information. And in their last report, they said or they found that manufacturing in the region in which North Carolina is located - in the Southeast - has been expanding. So this is good news. This indicates that maybe things are beginning to perk up here in North Carolina, particularly in manufacturing. It's also good news because manufacturing accounts for 50 percent more of our state economy than it does of the national economy. And actually if manufacturing starts to pick up and grows stronger that should makes sense because it really gets hit hard during recessions because people can postpone buying refrigerators and furniture, anything that's durable. Then when the economy does pick up, they go back and buy those things, so we should see a rebound - a strong rebound - in manufacturing. And perhaps we have some evidence that that indeed is occurring."