North Carolina: Income Down, Poverty Up

[Southron]

"Last month the US Census Bureau released new data revealing that household incomes are down and that poverty is up in North Carolina for the second straight year.

Between 2000 and 2002, comparing two-year averages, North Carolina median household income decreased by $1749, or -4.4 percent.

Two-year averages of the number of North Carolinians living below poverty grew from an estimated 985,000 to over 1.07 million between 2000 and 2002

[monsoon]

What is broken about North Carolina?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This is being caused the the closure of the cotton mills resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of textile jobs to China. Textiles are one of the traditional big 3 in NC. (Tobacco & Furniture are the other two) Look inside the tags of your clothes. I think it will be very difficult for you to find anything made in the USA. The chinese and a few other 3rd world countries make all our clothes now.

I would not characterize this a something broken about NC but rather something broken about US national policy which is allowing our manufacturing base to be transferred to China. All is not bad in NC however as the state continues to create thousands of jobs each year and those textile workers will eventually re-enter the workplace. In fact it is already happening in the 3 years since the period that report covers.

[JunktionFET]

This is old news and we've already discussed it a number of times (perhaps even on this forum?). The poverty rate grew as a direct result of many people losing their textile based job. When the report you cite was released in 2003, the state was still feeling the effects of a massive closure that previously occured in Cabarrus County.

Our state has been actively working since then on programs and recruiting new jobs to help these people. Of course, if the federal government had worked harder to retain such traditional jobs, this wouldn't be an issue.

So... there is nothing "broken" about NC at all.