A Duke survey of chief financial officers shows growing corporate optimism amount the economy, but an analysis of North Carolina’s employment patterns finds the opposite — a labor force that’s shrinking as more workers give up hope of finding jobs.

The survey released Tuesday found that half of the 848 chief financial officers who responded to the Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey are more optimistic about the U.S. economy and they expect company earnings to climb 20 percent this quarter.  The CFOs also said they plan to increase their full-time workforce by 2 percent in 2011, the largest planned hiring increase since early 2006.

“The U.S. employment picture is improving,” said John Graham, professor of finance at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business and director of the survey.

But the optimism in the corporate suite isn’t being seen in North Carolina. The state’s current  9.6 unemployment rate has fallen from a peak of 11.2 in January 2010, but the drop largely reflects the long-term unemployed abandoning the job market, according to a Chapel Hill consultant who  studies labor statistics.

John Quinterno of South by North Strategies, a research firm that specializing in economic and social policy, recently wrote an analysis of unemployment trends titled “North Carolina’s Disappearing Labor Force.”

“Over the past several months we’ve seen an improvement in the unemployment rate. But if you scratch beneath the surface you see it’s not an improvement in people going to work. It’s a contraction in the labor force,” Quinterno said in an interview with the NC Independent News. “What seems to be an improvement is actually masking a worrisome development.”

The North Carolina Employment Security Commission reports that since January, the number of workers in the state has fallen from 4,538,076 in January to 4,468.491 in October, a drop of 69,585 workers.

Larry Parker, an ESC spokesman, said, “We’re losing people out of the labor force. We’ve been very flat for job growth. We get a couple of job sectors that do well for a month or two and then they have bad month and we’re back to even.”

Parker said over 250,000 jobs have been lost in the state since the start of the recession in December 2007 and “it’s going to take a while for those to come back.” As of Nov. 18, he said, there were 304,621 North Carolinians receiving unemployment benefits.

Quinterno wasn’t surprised that corporate leaders are optimistic about the economy despite the grim employment trends.

“It depends on where you’re standing,” he said, “The big firms have succeeded in trimming costs and have in some ways become more profitable. For them, it feels like a recovery. However, if you are looking at the labor market, there really is no sign of a recovery.”

Quinterno said stubbornly high unemployment is ominous for the state and nation. Most of society’s safety nets and services — health care, retirement funding, even eligibility for unemployment — are tied to jobs, he said.

“We’ve built all these social services based on a strong, robust labor market and we don’t have that anymore,” he said.

Quinterno said the economic situation in North Carolina may deteriorate if Republicans leading the General Assembly carry through their pledge  to close the state’s projected $3.5 billion budget deficit with budget cuts alone. Vendors will lose contracts and state employees will lose jobs, he said, adding more unemployed workers and reducing consumer spending.

The debate over state budget cuts, Quinterno said, “will be framed as liberal versus conservatives, but that’s the wrong framing. What we’re really talking about is taking huge amounts of demand out of the economy.”

Quinterno said a further decline in the job market could be a disaster for the unemployed who have exhausted their eligibility for unemployment and have even less chance of finding work.

“What’s going to happen to all those folks?,” Quinterno said. “I don’t think anybody has an answer, but we’re about to find out.”