RALEIGH, N.C. -- North Carolina's jobs agency is announcing whether January's record unemployment rate has gotten better or worse.

The Employment Security Commission on Friday releases jobless data for February.

It was earlier this month that the state reported that January's unemployment rate hit a historic high of 11.1 percent. That's the highest level since states started their current calculation method
in 1976.

January also marked a year that the state's jobless rate has been stuck above its previous high. There were more than 500,000 unemployed workers statewide in January.

Any planned hiring in February may have been slowed by snowstorms that covered the state's western counties.

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