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So now CNN is trying to tell me that unemployment is bad throughout the whole country? Because I usually get all my economic news while reading this forum it is my understanding that SC is in much worse shape than the rest of the country. Mainly because we only have manufacturing and health care jobs.
South Carolina is not included in this list. I say CNN is lying!!!
Your reaction will depend on who you are listening to, but I can assure you this is definitely a national trend. Here are California's unemployment numbers for July 2009. http://www.calmis.ca.gov/file/lfmonth/lf_geomaps.pdf
Regardless whether or not SC made the CNN list....an 11.5% unemployment rate is still high. Especially for a state like SC that does not have a large population......that means a lot of people are out of work. I noticed in the CNN article where it mentioned that the states with the highest concentration of manufacturing jobs are the one's who have been hit the hardest! Which of course explains why SC has been hit this hard.........a big portion of the economy here is dependent on manufacturing. This is the reason that diversity becomes so important. It is not good to have all of our eggs in one basket!
We need to diversify the industries that exist here so that when recessions happen even if one industry is hit hard we will have other industry's to fall back on to provide stable jobs. If we would have had diversity now, when the recession happened the damage would have been limited and we could have contained it before it exploded into 11 & 12% unemployment rates. Going forward I hope a lesson is learned from this recession here in SC about the dangers of depending heavily on an industry!
Last edited by NewYorkBorn; 09-18-2009 at 10:48 PM..
My two cents here.....
It seems that some industries do naturally "cluster" in certain regions. Wineries in Northern California for the climate, automobile manufacturing in Detroit, Oil refineries in Texas, Biotech in California....etc... Natural resources (winemaking), talent pool and facilities (Science/biotech) and trained labor (autos) seem to be driving forces. The short answer is YES, every country and every region within a country must continually evaluate the economic drivers and their resource base to plan for the future. I don't have the stats but it seems that maybe we took our eye off of the ball after Carrol Campbell left office (with regards to economic development). Does anyone know if the economic development plan and objectives are published anywhere? What are the priorities and targets for the next 10 years? Based on the most recent data I saw, we are going to be swarmed with retirees (low cost of living) who will probably want to work part-time to supplement shrinking investment portfolios and SS checks. I'd really like to have more insight as to how folks on this forum believe we can participate in the solution......to do that, I think it is important to see the direction and amount of resources the state has committed to firing up engines that will promote employment. I'm really concerned because my home base is Greenwood, SC and we continue to simply get low paying call center jobs ($8.50/hour). Now I am grateful that some folks are getting a paycheck rather than nothing at all but we can't take our eye off of the ball here. This is not a living wage, really....$17,680 per year (before taxes). There is much ballyhooing about the sheer number of jobs created with this call center. Again, not to be a negative nelly here, but there must be some group, somewhere working on a solid plan to leverage the educated talent pool and natural resources of SC to lure real world opportunities to our state. How can we tap into the decision makers and monitor their plan and progress???
Tinabean if you happen to find out any information regarding what the plan is to diversify South Carolina's industry's please send me a direct message. The lack of job opportunities and economic future of SC is something we should all be concerned about. There is a new call center here in Greenville (Simpsonville or Mauldin) under a company called Alorica. This company provides customer service support for Samsung. Have been looking for a better paying job, spoke with their recruiter and they are paying people $9.34 an hour. As you mentioned we need jobs here that are going to provide people with a living wage. Job creation is one thing but allowing companies to locate here and pay people a low wage is not the way to build the economic future of the state.
Tinabean if you happen to find out any information regarding what the plan is to diversify South Carolina's industry's please send me a direct message. The lack of job opportunities and economic future of SC is something we should all be concerned about. There is a new call center here in Greenville (Simpsonville or Mauldin) under a company called Alorica. This company provides customer service support for Samsung. Have been looking for a better paying job, spoke with their recruiter and they are paying people $9.34 an hour. As you mentioned we need jobs here that are going to provide people with a living wage. Job creation is one thing but allowing companies to locate here and pay people a low wage is not the way to build the economic future of the state.
The important question we must ask is, "How much prior experience is required for these customer service support positions?" I'm guessing not much, if any. Therefore, $9.34 is not that bad. Plus, there are probably many positions there which will pay much more than that. It won't just be a building full of low-wage workers as you imply - there will be supervisors, managers, etc.
Tinabean if you happen to find out any information regarding what the plan is to diversify South Carolina's industry's please send me a direct message. The lack of job opportunities and economic future of SC is something we should all be concerned about. There is a new call center here in Greenville (Simpsonville or Mauldin) under a company called Alorica. This company provides customer service support for Samsung. Have been looking for a better paying job, spoke with their recruiter and they are paying people $9.34 an hour. As you mentioned we need jobs here that are going to provide people with a living wage. Job creation is one thing but allowing companies to locate here and pay people a low wage is not the way to build the economic future of the state.
These aren't the only jobs coming to/being created in the area. Although it happened some time back, GE moved the engineering HQ for its energy unit to Greenville, bringing hundreds of well-paid, highly-educated new people/jobs. Also, the Nuclear unit of Fluor was brought to Greenville, again bringing many knowledge-based jobs to the area. Hopefully CU-ICAR will bear more fruit as well.
Back to manufacturing, BMW is almost finished nearly doubling the size of their factory in the Upstate, and GE is moving one of its manufacturing functions to a whole new facility as it needs more room to grow.
If the state of SC can get a smooth and user-friendly recruiting & relocation program for companies, if the economy turns around and if we can secure meaningful service from a low-cost air carrier, our area should be poised for rapid growth once again.
These aren't the only jobs coming to/being created in the area. Although it happened some time back, GE moved the engineering HQ for its energy unit to Greenville, bringing hundreds of well-paid, highly-educated new people/jobs. Also, the Nuclear unit of Fluor was brought to Greenville, again bringing many knowledge-based jobs to the area. Hopefully CU-ICAR will bear more fruit as well.
Back to manufacturing, BMW is almost finished nearly doubling the size of their factory in the Upstate, and GE is moving one of its manufacturing functions to a whole new facility as it needs more room to grow.
If the state of SC can get a smooth and user-friendly recruiting & relocation program for companies, if the economy turns around and if we can secure meaningful service from a low-cost air carrier, our area should be poised for rapid growth once again.
These companies that you mention are still a part of the manufacturing industry and as far as bringing highly educated people and good paying jobs to the area. That is great but does not help to create jobs for the masses of natives. All this accomplishes is transferring skilled people to the area to take these jobs while those who are born here continue to suffer with limited and low paying employment options. Then what happens is that an elite group of well paid people (small group) is created while the vast majority of the population lives on money that is less then livable. We have condos in downtown Greenville that are almost 1 million dollars......who is buying them? Definitely not the natives, it is the newcomers like myself who GE & BMW are transferring from higher paying states and bringing that money with them.
I know because I was transferred from NYC to fill a position here in South Carolina because the company had a hard time finding the talent pool to take the job. We must diversify and attract other industries here besides manufacturing. This way when BMW's car sales are not good the upstate residents will not suffer because of it. A luxury car is not a neccessity, when there is a recession the luxuries are the first thing that people stop buying. The other thing is the education and what the children are being taught in SC. It is great to know how to build things (manufacturing, engineering etc.) but there also has to be a strong curriculum teaching the children about business. Not everyone wants to work in manufacturing so we need a stronger talent pool that has the education to use their minds in an office setting.
Bringing educated well paid talent here is one thing......keeping us here is a completely different story. The only thing that will keep us here is job diversity and forward thinking progress.
These companies that you mention are still a part of the manufacturing industry and as far as bringing highly educated people and good paying jobs to the area. That is great but does not help to create jobs for the masses of natives. All this accomplishes is transferring skilled people to the area to take these jobs while those who are born here continue to suffer with limited and low paying employment options. Then what happens is that an elite group of well paid people (small group) is created while the vast majority of the population lives on money that is less then livable. We have condos in downtown Greenville that are almost 1 million dollars......who is buying them? Definitely not the natives, it is the newcomers like myself who GE & BMW are transferring from higher paying states and bringing that money with them.
I know because I was transferred from NYC to fill a position here in South Carolina because the company had a hard time finding the talent pool to take the job. We must diversify and attract other industries here besides manufacturing. This way when BMW's car sales are not good the upstate residents will not suffer because of it. A luxury car is not a neccessity, when there is a recession the luxuries are the first thing that people stop buying. The other thing is the education and what the children are being taught in SC. It is great to know how to build things (manufacturing, engineering etc.) but there also has to be a strong curriculum teaching the children about business. Not everyone wants to work in manufacturing so we need a stronger talent pool that has the education to use their minds in an office setting.
Bringing educated well paid talent here is one thing......keeping us here is a completely different story. The only thing that will keep us here is job diversity and forward thinking progress.
You are so bitter. No one can say anything about the Greenville economy without you responding 10 billion times about how bad Greenville is. We get your point. Can't you just post 1 response and allow people to have an opinion that doesn't agree with you?
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