AI-assisted summaryHenderson and Polk counties reached their lowest unemployment rates since Tropical Storm Helene in March.Henderson County’s unemployment rate was 3.5%, while Polk and Transylvania counties were at 3.6% and 3.7%, respectively.Experts predict full economic recovery in Western North Carolina may take one to two years due to the impact on tourism and infrastructure.In March, unemployment in Henderson and Polk counties dropped to their lowest levels since Tropical Storm Helene hit the region in late September, according to a county-by-county breakdown released by the North Carolina Department of Commerce April 29.Transylvania County’s unemployment remained the same as in February — a decrease from January but still higher than in December.Henderson County saw an unemployment rate of 3.5% in March, less than a point higher than September 2024’s rate of 2.7% immediately before Helene. March’s rate was slightly lower than the 3.6% seen in August 2024.Polk County had an unemployment rate of 3.6% in March and Transylvania County 3.7%, roughly matching last month’s rate though down from 4% and 4.1%, respectively, in February.By contrast, Buncombe County has yet to return to typical 2024 levels after a sharp increase in unemployment after the storm from 2.5% in September to 8.8% in October.Buncombe County’s unemployment reached 8.8% in October, nearly 5% higher than Transylvania County’s during the same month.But in March, Buncombe County’s rate had dropped to 5.3%, falling below 6% for the first time since Helene and making for a 6-month average of almost 3% higher than in Henderson, Polk and Transylvania counties.Of the three counties to the south, Henderson County saw the highest peak by half a point, at 4.6% in October.Brittany Brady, president of the Henderson County Partnership for Economic Development, told the Times-News that a rate of 4% is considered “full employment” and she expects rates in Henderson County to stabilize at around 3.5% going forward.Many Buncombe County tourism employers in places like “Biltmore Village and Swannanoa and the River Arts District… sit along waterways” and so were more prone to flooding, Brady said. “Whereas in our community, it’s just laid out slightly different, so we didn’t have as many employers impacted.”While many parts of Henderson County were spared from the worst of the flooding that devastated other areas, power and data outages took a toll on many local businesses, especially service and retail businesses because of an inability to process electronic payments, Ben Smith, director of the Small Business Center at Blue Ridge Community College told the Times-News. Apple farming, among other types of agriculture, was a major sector that was particularly vulnerable to damage caused directly by the storm.Henderson County’s unemployment rate has generally stayed “under 4%, outside of the COVID years, pretty much full time,” Brady said. “It appears that we’re getting back to those employment numbers before Helene,” and she expects that now there might be “probably more open positions out there than there are job seekers.”Nathan Ramsey, director of the Mountain Area Workforce Development Board at the Land of Sky Regional Council, told the Times-News he thought March’s numbers were “a good improvement.”Counties like Henderson that weren’t hit as hard by Helene because of the industries they rely on and the amount of damage they sustained have “recovered,” he said.“If Helene hadn’t happened, their unemployment rate would probably be lower than what it is right now. But when your unemployment rate is in the threes, that’s pretty good.”“The Asheville Metro is still the highest unemployment rate in North Carolina,” he said. “But at 4.8%, that’s less than half what it was in our post-Helene peak. So, it looks like the labor market is improving.”Places reliant on hospitality and tourism continue to be impacted, in part, because a lot of tourism and transportation infrastructure, such as the Blue Ridge Parkway for instance, is not yet fully open yet.“Most people I talked to don’t believe our economy is going to fully recover until fall of this year or later,” Ramsey said. “I’m anticipating that there’ll be an elevated unemployment rate in Western North Carolina for the next year or two.”George Fabe Russell is the Henderson County Reporter for the Hendersonville Times-News. Tips, questions, comments? Email him at GFRussell@gannett.com.More: HUD approves state action plan for Tropical Storm Helene recoveryMore: AmeriCorps abruptly removes Helene recovery workers from Western NC amid DOGE cuts
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