The job count for Greensboro in the past week is not as rosy as it may seem.

The Greensboro City Council voted on Tuesday, May 6 to offer an economic incentive of $1.6 million to Lollytogs to build a facility on Summit Avenue and bring 116 new jobs to Greensboro.

Comments at the meeting were made about the new jobs coming to Greensboro, but no comments were made about an announcement on Monday, May 5 that CommScope was closing down its facility at 8420 Triad Dr. and laying off more than 250 employees.

Based on those announcements that would put Greensboro at a loss of 134 jobs.

Monday, May 10, Conduit Global at 5420 Millstream Road announced it was laying off 173 employees. The postal address of Conduit Global is McLeansville, which might lead some people to believe that it isn’t in Greensboro, but it is. McLeansville is not an incorporated town and, like Brown Summit, much of what the US Postal Service considers McLeansville is actually in the city limits of Greensboro.

While the City Council celebrated the new jobs and growth from Lollytogs, Greensboro, according to announcements in the news, lost over 300 jobs in the past week, which may explain why Greensboro is growing more slowly than many cities in the state.

According to Homesnacks.com, which ranked cities in North Carolina based on rate of growth since the 2010 Census, Greensboro ranked 66th in the state by adding 27,945 new residents in the past 10 years.  The 10-year growth rate is listed as 9.8 percent, or less than 1 percent a year, but was a good enough for Greensboro to remain the third largest city in the state.

Durham, which is the fourth largest city in North Carolina, by contrast is ranked 31st in the state in growth rate during the past 10 years.  Durham grew by 49,378, or about 22 percent, more than 2 percent per year.

Charlotte, the largest city in the state, is ranked 34th in growth rate but added an impressive 151,529 people, which means the number of new residents in Charlotte, if they had all moved to an open field and started a new town, would be the eighth largest city in the state right behind Cary and ahead of High Point.

According to Homesnacks.com, the fastest growing city in the state is Rolesville in Wake County near Raleigh, which grew at a rate of 127.7 percent.

Rolesville went from a population of 3,289 in 2010 to a population of 7,488 in 2020.