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North Carolina’s unemployment picture for July offered a little of everything — some good news, some bad and some more of the same.

The good news? The jobless rate fell in more than half the state’s 100 counties last month.

The bad? More than two-thirds of those counties still have rates of 10 percent or higher.

As for the status quo? In Guilford and 11 other counties, the rate remained unchanged from June.

Elsewhere in the Triad, the news was mixed. Three counties saw their rates climb; three reported declines. And the rate in Greensboro-High Point also declined slightly.

Statewide, the unemployment rate fell from 11.2 percent to 11.1.

But overall, July marked the 10th consecutive month in which North Carolina employers eliminated more jobs — 26,400 — than they created.

“We still have an incredibly weak labor market,” said John Quinterno, principal at South by North Strategies in Chapel Hill. “We are still in a particularly dire situation.”

The report released by the Employment Security Commission of North Carolina showed that 59 counties saw their unemployment rates drop in July, but 69 still have rates of 10 percent or more. More than a third had rates of at least 12 percent.

The ESC pointed out that coastal counties typically experience rate decreases in July because of the need for summer workers.

“The rest of the state has not had as much summer hiring compared to previous years,” ESC Chairman Moses Carey Jr. said in a prepared statement. “But there was enough to drop the rates in more than half the state’s 100 counties.”

Unemployment rates also decreased in nine of the state’s 14 metro areas, including a drop from 10.4 percent to 10.3 percent in Winston-Salem and from 12 percent to 11.9 percent in Greensboro-High Point.

The rate climbed from 12.5 percent to 12.6 percent in Burlington.

Eight of the metro areas still have rates of 10 percent or higher, including Charlotte and the Triad.

“For any meaningful statewide labor market recovery too occur, job growth will need to resume in North Carolina’s three major metropolitan areas,” Quinterno wrote in his monthly analysis of employment data. “There was little evidence this was happening in July.”

Quinterno also said that month-to-month changes in unemployment rates can be misleading because they are not adjusted for seasonal effects. He said a more accurate comparison is to contrast data from July this year with the same month last year.

Last month, he said, 82 counties reported unemployment rates that were at least 1.5 times greater than a year earlier. In Guilford, the rate jumped from 6.7 percent in July 2008 to 11.7 percent last month.

Two Triad counties did show signs of improvement in their employment pictures for last month. In Rockingham, the jobless rate fell from 13.6 percent in June to 13 percent in July. And in Randolph, the rate fell from 12.3 percent to 11.8.

But overall, Quinterno wrote, “economic conditions remain quite weak, and unless the demand for goods and services increases, North Carolina communities will struggle with high levels of (unemployment) well into the future.”

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com