Mark Vitner Year Quotations

It continues to defy all the expectations of doom in the housing market. Demand for housing still remains quite strong and this year will be a record year for single-family construction.

Overall this year the economy moved past the bursting of the stock market bubble. Tech companies finally started growing again and that's really benefited the Triangle.

When combined with the anticipated double-digit gains in employer health-care costs, manufacturers may find it very difficult to add to their payrolls next year and may opt to work their existing work forces longer.

The unemployment rate is likely to hang around 4.5 percent and finish the year somewhere near 4 percent. That would mean that North Carolina would be back in the familiar position of having an unemployment rate below that of the nation.

The problem with the November employment numbers is hiring for the holiday season. It's hard to get a gauge of what it's going to be. They do a seasonal adjustment to the number to account for that, but the seasonal adjustment causes wider swings. And this year Thanksgiving came later in the month, so hiring might have started after the November data was collected.

When all is said and done, we should still have a fairly healthy level of new home sales this year -- probably up 4 to 5 percent for the year.