want to move to tennessee (Kingsport, Morristown: sales, find a job, water heater)

[CUJO'S MOM]

hi i am a 53 year old female living in south alabama for over 25 years have worked all my life here BUT have been laid off now over a year and i can not find any employment However i would like another crack at making a living and have always wanted and thought about living close to the smokey's and seasons of the year i would very much appreciate any sort of guidence anyone can give on where to live there and cost of living and all

[DubbleT]

I don't want to burst your bubble, but jobs aren't that easy to find here either. What sort of work would you be looking for? Do you have some savings to live on until you find a job?
Cost of living is low compared to a lot of places, but I can't imagine it would be all that much of a difference from AL. No state income tax here, but we do have over 9% sales tax rate.

[jabogitlu]

That's what I was thinking. Unless you're coming from Mobile or Montgomery, you're likely going to find cost of living higher in the Tri-Cities. Our unskilled labor market actually may be faring better, though, than the professional. Check out our jobs on:
- Craigslist.com
- Johnsoncitypress.com/Jobs (make sure you capitalize Jobs, the JCP web designer was an idiot)
- timesnews.net/classifieds.php
- Tennessee Department of Human Resources (http://tn.gov/dohr/employment/openings.html - broken link)

The biggest employers in the area include Eastman (Kingsport), ETSU (JC), Mountain States Health Alliance (JC), Wellmont Health System (Kingsport), American Water Heater (JC), AGC Flat Glass (Kingsport - Corporate Services Hdq), KVAT Foods in Abingdon VA, Exide (Bristol), and the local school systems.

What sort of industry will you be looking in? Morristown and Greeneville are generally better for raw industrial, but their economies right now are shredded - Greeneville's employment rates, last I saw, hovered around 17%.