A sub-5 percent rate is an important signal to the rest of the country that the North Carolina job market is strong despite the significant restructuring occurring.

Right now, the sales tax is imposed only on goods, and not services. At the retail level, people are starting to spend more on services than on goods.

There are probably some seasonal-adjustment issues creating the big drop in unemployment and the big gain in employment between December and January.

We have all the ingredients for a strong biotech industry here with the agriculture, pharmaceuticals and educational base.

These have been fast-growing sectors, and are expected to continue to be. They also pay average- to above-average salaries. But certainly, we will always have underemployed folks in a rapidly changing economy. I just don't know how many.

So I'm not sure I believe the big gains, and there's no way we'll create 27,000 net new jobs every month. It is a great start to the year, but the pace of improvement likely won't be sustained.

We're one of the leading growth areas of the country -- we should see the residential [building] industry expand this year.

So this is a good report for Durham County, a strong report.

I think it can go down more and I think '06 will be a good year. The region is still considered one of the hot regions.