The economy could get worse ó perhaps much worse ó before it gets any better, we’re hearing from all quarters. As if to underscore that dire possibility came Thursday’s news of layoffs at Freightliner, affecting almost 1,300 workers at its Cleveland truck plant and another 1,000 workers elsewhere. A day earlier, Carter Furniture shut down its Salisbury plant, which employed 70 people.
Actually, the numbers affected will be substantially higher once you factor in the domino effect. When manufacturers downsize or close, it inevitably has an impact on upstream suppliers such as the Alcoa Sub-Assembly plant on Airport Road, which puts together wheel assemblies for Freightliner and other truck makers. And beyond the supply and assembly chain, these layoffs will have an impact on all the businesses that benefit from the paychecks that purchased food, fuel, clothes, medicine and other necessities for the workers and their families.
While other local companies have been forced to lay off workers or leave positions unfilled in recent months, Freightliner’s slowdown is the kind of large-scale layoff that shoots tremors throughout the whole community. For the truck plant workers, it is all the more wrenching given that a mere five months ago, the company was recalling several hundred employees who’d been idled in a previous slowdown. The economic cycle gives, and it takes away.
How long this downturn will last is anyone’s guess. Although some economists point out that we’re already nearing the average length of most post-Depression downturns, that’s of little comfort to those who have lost their jobs or are struggling to keep their businesses operating. Averages don’t mean much weighed against the particular hardships of people caught in the gaping maw of this recession. As our recent unemployment rate of 8.6 percent showed, Rowan County has a rising number of people in that predicament ó and that jobless rate is already more than a month old.
At the state and federal level, officials are mulling various stimulous plans. President-elect Barack Obama is now talking about an $800 billion plan, even as he warns of trillion-dollar deficits extending years into the future. In North Carolina, top elected officials agreed this week to speed up more than $740 million in government building projects, a decision outgoing Gov. Mike Easley said will hurry the creation of more than 25,000 new jobs.
Whether any of those jobs will end up here in Rowan County is anybody’s guess, at this point. What we do know is that the county has a network of local and state agencies, as well as nonprofit groups, that can help idled workers cope with the loss of their livelihoods, bridge the financial hardships and perhaps pursue training for a new career. Rather than a stimulus plan, they offer survival strategies. These agencies have responded swiftly to workers’ needs in the past and are already putting the wheels in motion to do so again. Unfortunately, those wheels may be turning a lot more before this is over.