I heard the Mayor last week touting the fact that we have gained 1,400 new jobs in Hickory this year and the same number was touted by Scott Millar, the head of the Catawba County Economic Development Corporation, yesterday in the Hickory Daily Record. The Mayor stated on Hal Rowe's show that he believes that the uptick in Unemployment is a result of National and State Economic Issues. He hopes that these job losses will be temporary and these 1,400 jobs will make quite a favorable impact. He says that from an Economic Development standpoint that we have had an excellent year.
Mr. Mayor I just don't see it that way. It is nice that Mr. Rowe gives you a platform to speak from, but please leave the political spin at home. Let's talk about results. You mentioned that these 1,400 jobs were created at Williams-Sonoma, MDI, Convergis, and FedEx. How many of these jobs have actually been realized, versus proposed?
These jobs have little impact on our area's current unemployment numbers. Most of these jobs do not exist at the moment. Local officials have never stated how many of these proposed 1,400 currently exist (people actually doing the work). They act as though they are all currently online and they are not!!!
It is time to stop the obfuscation! Unemployment is up 2.2% in Catawba County to 8.3%. Statistics show that we have lost approximately 1,401 jobs in this county this year (January through October) and 3,513 in the Unifour (January to September). To get back to 5% in Catawba County unemployment, we have to find a net-plus of 2,489 jobs.
It is ridiculous to blame the state and federal government for our situation. This area has been in a malaise since 2001. Since the employment peak of June 2000, we have lost 9,290 jobs in Catawba County and 24,493 jobs in the Unifour.
In Catawba County, since May 2001, we have only had unemployment lower than 5% during one month. Disastrously, we have not had a single month where we had a better unemployment rate than the state or federal government. 56 of the succeeding 89 months have seen Catawba County at least 1% worse than the state’s unemployment rate. Comparing to the Federal rate, we also have been at least 1% worse in 63 out of those 89 months.
I know that these a lot of numbers and many of you may not be interested in the numbers, but there is a pattern here. We were a successful community, because of our robust industrial based economy. The community was doing well as a whole and now only certain pockets of our community are doing well, while most of us are worried to death about our future.
City officials seem to think that we can magically transform this area into a more service oriented economy, while watching our industrial manufacturing base wither and die. Our successes in the past were brought about by an industrial based economy. While the days of the hosiery industry have long since passed, there are still new, innovative, technical manufacturing industries waiting to be brought here or discovered. We should not seek to return to a bygone era, but we should learn the salient points of our history.
Do we not expect Accountability? Local government leaders have stood by and watched our manufacturing base shrivel, while constantly telling us our economy is turning around. The numbers don’t lie. The time has long since passed for results. If this were a corporation, we would have changed management teams a long time ago. These results are inexcusable under any criteria. The Wright path has led us in the wrong direction!!!
The Unifour's Unemployment Numbers:
http://hickoryhound.googlegroups.com/web/Unifour%20Area%20Unemployment%20figures.xls?gsc=wiJC5BYAAAD6B-_n9Gqh7BP95elZ_rEh57an5Fe8QJeePd7zpGv9tg
Catawba County Unemployment Spreadsheet:
http://hickoryhound.googlegroups.com/web/Hickory+Unemployment+4+-+2k81205+(3).xls?gda=s4SZuF4AAADNJTwgxLHl9sR8sNs28UTRi4vdkNwo0RBTBC1DMH_pYIFlaxaQ3AwJ_PQYCE0hwCt1ev9eErEjiTzqK7Iu2WwPmww4DpCobtkUhHoXAeUyAeOwpdWz5ftt1dlzlu5J-bE
