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Hi, my dream is finally going to come true, and we will be moving to NC mountains from hot, muggy, crowded metro Atlanta starting with a visit in December.
I have two 20-year-olds. They are going to college on-line and working part-time. They will need to have jobs for us to make it as I will be on disability. This will probably be my last home and I want a small town in the mountains, and I NEED cool temperatures for my health. But my daughter wants to be closer to the city and I am worried if we don't live near Asheville they will not be able to find a job.
With all the college students in Boone, what are the odds they can find a job - they are currently a cashier and a courtesy clerk at grocery stores. I haven't been around these areas since I was a kid - just know it felt like home in those mountains, and my kids have never been. We will have to accomplish a lot of looking in that week-long trip so I am trying to find out all I can.
Banner Elk seems lovely too, but again a small town and not sure how many jobs. Boone seems to have a nice business school, which is what my daughter chose as a major - marketing and business.
Would love to hear of a cool area with low population but close to jobs! I won't need one, but they definitely will!
Do you have a budget? And a contingency plan for if/when kids move out? If you can't make it without them I'd be reallllllllyyyy cautious of moving....especially to a big second home destination with very little cheap housing.
That really isn't what I was asking and not really your concern, but I am a mature and responsible person. I'm a single mother who plowed through pounds of difficult paperwork on my own and without a professional career managed to adopt two kids from China. I raised them alone and schooled them from K-12. I assure you I'm not frolicking over without a plan! We have a budget, we have a lender, we have a nest egg that will give the kids a generous amount of time to find a job. When they move out I will have no problem meeting my budget - I just can't afford to pay all their expenses after the first year or so if we want to save anything.
My $0.02 FWIW ... AppState is the major employer. I worked there for over 5 years. Coming in from the 'outside' is difficult to find a mid to low level position. College of Biz @ App is excellent. Lots of student competition for service related jobs. Pay is low, COL is high (IMHO). Summertime the population expands with secondary residents who have summer homes. Student population swells in fall, as expected. Housing prices (homes and rent) are on the high end unless you locate on the 'outskirts' of town (Deep Gap, Ashe County). Congestion is increasing with Blowing Rock Road being more and more of a bottle neck of traffic. Publix came in and there is a huge apartment complex just south of campus. The quaint, small college town is growing - ASU football is driving a lot of it. If 'city amenities' and more choices other than Wal*Mart are needed, then Winston Salem is the closest city to the east and Hickory to the south. Depending on where you settle, the commute to Winston can be as short as 75 minutes and Hickory might be a little less. Also, being on the east side of Watauga county gives you short commutes to West Jeff, Wilkesboro and Boone (kinda in the middle of it all). Also, using the parkway can get you to BRock in about 20 minutes or so, depending on where you end up living. Summertime weather is phenomenal. Winter is sketchy, again it depends on elevation.
For young folks needing entry-level part-time jobs, there are always the usual openings... grocery stores, retail, restaurants, etc. In the Boone/Blowing Rock/Banner Elk area, a lot of folks at that level will alternate two seasonal jobs, rather than one year-round. Ski areas in the winter and landscapers/construction in the summer. And then there are tourist focused businesses like Tweetsie Railroad that hire a lot of students in the summer. For what it's worth, the Food Lion in Banner Elk seems to always have a "Hiring Now" sign out.
I personally don't think that proximity to Asheville would be a benefit. Everything that I hear and read says that the job market is no better, and possibly even worse, because of Asheville's popularity. Yes the High Country is not Charlotte or Raleigh, but it seems to me that if a young person presents himself/herself as honest, industrious, reliable, there is opportunity in our area.
I'll echo EdyGourmet... the business school at App State is excellent.
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