The Durham-Chapel Hill metro shed around 3,800 jobs in 2025, new U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show, even as the Raleigh metro posted some of the strongest job growth among North Carolina's 10 largest metros.
The losses cut across two sectors. Gerald Cohen, chief economist at the Kenan Institute, said cuts to science funding hit the area hard, with around 1,600 jobs lost in professional, scientific, and technical services. Another 1,800 disappeared from manufacturing.
The culprits are familiar names. Duke University offered buyouts to hundreds of employees. FHI360 and RTI International both absorbed the fallout from U.S. AID funding cuts. Wolfspeed cut hundreds of positions at its Durham plants. Each reflected a different pressure on the metro's job base, but the underlying cause was consistent: reduced federal research spending flowing through institutions that anchor Durham's economy.
Not all the news is grim. Pharmaceutical firms Novartis and AbbVie are expanding in the area. Cohen said that could mean 2025 was a one-year correction rather than a structural slide. Durham's longer-term appeal to life sciences companies has not disappeared.
Still, 3,800 jobs is a real number. For a metro area where a large share of residents are already financially strained, the losses land unevenly. The pharma expansions arriving in 2026 will be the first real test of that thesis.