Another story today, this one out of North Carolina, that serves as a stark reminder of the ripple effect on communities when manufacturing jobs disappear.

Southern Tool Manufacturing, a small family-owned business that once employed more than 60 people in Winston-Salem, is shutting its doors. Its owners point to the closing of Thomasville and Broyhill furniture facilities in the area as the reason for lost business, which created a hurdle the small company couldn’t get over.

This article says that despite more than 45,000 manufacturing jobs lost in the area in the past five years, unemployment hasn’t moved above 5.5 percent. However, ManufactureThis will point out that a low unemployment rate doesn’t mean these workers who’ve lost their jobs aren’t any worse off. The real question is what jobs are available to these workers. Are they jobs that are on par with the high-paying manufacturing jobs they’ve lost?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 at 5:14 pm and is filed under Manufacturing in the U.S., Economic Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.