* As unemployment hovers at record highs and the recession lingers, state authorities say a growing number of companies are falling behind on paying unemployment insurance taxes.

State officials say about 6 percent of the businesses that contribute payroll taxes were delinquent at the end of June. The delinquent businesses owed a total of $13.5 million.

With unemployment across North Carolina at its highest rate in decades, tens of thousands of workers trying to claim benefits were stymied by two days of computer problems.

The problems involve an online system that people receiving benefits use to confirm they are still looking for a job so they will continue to receive unemployment checks. With 200,000 North Carolinians out of work, the outages that started Sunday and continued Monday caused significant disruption.

"There's no time that's a good time for this to happen," Moses Carey, chairman of the state Employment Security Commission, said Monday. "People rely on this money." (N&0)

The recession has hit everybody hard in North Carolina, but the job market has been particularly difficult for African Americans, according to a new study.

A new survey found that white unemployment in the Tar Heel state was 9.2 percent, compared with 14.8 percent for blacks for the first quarter of the year, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based liberal think tank, reports Rob Christensen.

But unemployment has been rising slightly faster for whites during the recession.

At the beginning of the recession in the last quarter of 2007, the unemployment rate for whites was 4 percent in North Carolina, while the unemployment rate for blacks was 8.2 percent.

Once guaranteed a shot at the good life, a growing number of those who practice law find themselves among the unemployed. This spring, out-of-work attorneys are being joined in the brutal job market by hundreds of newly minted lawyers graduating from the state's seven law schools, many planning to take the bar exam this summer.

"It's not a happy picture," said Allan Head, director of the N.C. Bar Association, a voluntary professional organization with 13,500 members across the state. "I can't remember a time when lawyers were being laid off."

Nationally, the unemployment rate in 2008 for the legal profession, including paralegals as well as lawyers, was at the highest it's been in years -- 2.6 percent, approximately 44,000 people, according to data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number is believed to have increased this year.

Gov. Beverly Perdue said this morning she saw "a glimmer of hope" with the economy, with the stock market showing some signs of life and with signs that North Carolina may be reaching the bottom with unemployment.

Perdue said that the new figures to be released this morning show unemployment in March had only risen one-tenth of one percent, Rob Christensen reports.

But the governor said there was still heavy pain all across the state from people of all walks of life who have lost their job.

"The question I hear over and over is the next pay check going to be a pink slip?" Perdue told about 50 people at a meeting of the Alliance of North Carolina Black Elected Officials at the Sheraton Raleigh Hotel.

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North Carolina's unemployment rate will reach 12 percent, predicts Harry M. Davis, economist for the N.C. Bankers Association and a banking professor at Appalachian State University.

North Carolina now ranks fourth in unemployment, he said.

The state's economy is suffering more than the nation as a whole, because the state still has a large manufacturing sector, Davis said in a news release from the bankers this morning. North Carolina's manufacturing base diminished substantially over the past decade, while high-tech, health care and finance have grown. Despite that shift, the slowdown in global trade has hurt the remaining manufacturing businesses.

"We can expect our unemployment rate to rise to 12 percent soon," Davis said in the release, "and continue to rise into next year."

On the brighter side, Davis said the housing market may be near the bottom, and commodity prices have stopped dropping, which are both positive signs.

Where has North Carolina lost jobs last year?

According to seasonally adjusted figures from the N.C. Employment Security Commission, the state lost 120,200 jobs between December of 2007 and 2008.

The biggest job losses by sector:

Manufacturing: 39,800, or 7.4 percent
Professional & Business Services: 39,800, or 7.8 percent
Trade, Transportation and Utilities: 30,000, or 3.8 percent
Construction: 17,900, or 7 percent

Dr. Betty McGrath, the labor market information director, said that manufacturing continued to bleed jobs, as it has in past year. But the recent recession also hurt construction and temp jobs that had been doing well.

The only sector that went up over the past year was Educational and Health Services, which saw an increase of 18,000 jobs.

Mike Walden thinks the White House may be overstating the number of new jobs.

The N.C. State economics professor says he believes the $789 billion stimulus package signed by President Obama will not necessarily lead to 105,000 jobs in North Carolina.

The crux of the issue is what multiplier to use on spending. The White House assumes that the stimulus will not only directly employ people to build roads, for example, but also lead to secondary jobs in related areas, such as selling paving equipment.

Walden isn't so sure. He thinks that effect will be offset by the massive borrowing the federal government has to undertake to pay for the stimulus.

Essentially, Walden said that the government's borrowing may use up some of Wall Street's line of credit and "crowd out" private borrowers looking to refurbish a factory, for example.

Still, he said that even a lower figure would have a "noticeable" effect on the state's 8.7 percent unemployment rate.

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The economy is top on voters' minds.

A recent poll by the conservative Civitas Institute found that the economy and unemployment were the most important issues for North Carolinians and their highest priority for Gov. Beverly Perdue and President Obama.

Thirty-eight percent said unemployment was "the biggest issue or problem facing North Carolina today," while 24 percent said the economy. Education and high taxes were next with just 6 percent each.

Fifty-five percent said the economy should be the president's top priority, while 15 percent said unemployment. Eight percent said "end the war."

Thirty percent said the economy should be the governor's top priority, while 29 percent said unemployment. Nine percent said "education issues."

The live phone survey of 600 likely voters was conducted Jan. 19-22. The margin of error is plus or minus four percentage points.