Posted on 03/14/2004 9:33:31 AM PST by Kuksool
There was a time when the Triangle offered the best of two worlds: top-notch, high-paying, New Economy jobs and a small-town lifestyle in a pleasant climate. People flocked here by the thousands from Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Houston -- all the big cities that had become too expensive and difficult to afford middle-class families a comfortable life. Today, the dream of the Triangle has become elusive for many of those transplants, thousands of whom remain unemployed or underemployed three years after the local economy imploded.
Some have given up, sold their homes and moved away. Many others are desperately hanging onto their lives here, wondering why the region can't seem to create new jobs when markets elsewhere are beginning to pick up.
In the past year in the area, only 1,200 new jobs were created in the large professional and business services sector that includes many of the computer programmers, marketing specialists, management consultants and engineers who were caught in the recent economic downturn. That has dimmed hopes for many job seekers who expected better news as the economy recovers. Some even wonder whether the Triangle has forever lost its economic edge.
"I knew of the layoffs in this area, but never did I think that a year after coming here would we be facing the kinds of decisions we're facing now," said Steve Gallagher. A former senior executive in the wireless telecommunications industry, he lost his job a few months after moving his family from Chicago to Chapel Hill in November 2002. Red-M, the British company he had worked for since 2001, was pulling back its U.S. operations, leaving Gallagher with a choice: stay put or pull up stakes again.
"We made the decision to come here for a better life, and now we're battling to stay," he said.
In recent months, the 42-year-old Canadian native has turned down promising job leads in Boston, California's Silicon Valley and the Dallas-Fort Worth area after prospective employers refused to let him telecommute from North Carolina.
If he's still not employed by the end of this year, he says, he will consider taking a position in another state and commuting back two weekends a month, rather than moving his stay-at-home wife, Heather, and two young daughters from Chapel Hill.
A quick glance at the numbers seems to confirm what many job seekers have long suspected: The metropolitan area that includes Wake, Durham, Johnston, Orange, Chatham and Franklin counties is not keeping pace with regions in many other states.
In the last quarter of 2003, cities such as Seattle, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Miami enjoyed small increases in employment that seemed to suggest a gradual turnaround in those job markets, according to revised data published last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even Austin, Texas, and San Jose, Calif. -- technology meccas that were hit hard by the recession -- posted tiny gains in employment. During the same period, however, the Triangle lost 500 jobs.
So why do people resist leaving if they could do better somewhere else?
A friendly place
Gallagher's reasons for clinging to life in Chapel Hill echo those given by most struggling Triangle newcomers who resist leaving: the mild weather, relaxed pace, proximity to the coast and the mountains, easy commutes, lower housing costs, good schools and friendly people.
"In Colorado, I got to know just two of my neighbors in eight years," said Sandy McCullough, 51, who moved his family from Colorado Springs to Wake Forest in early 1998. "Here I knew all my neighbors before I moved in."
As a car salesman in Raleigh, he makes less than a third of what he used to earn managing computer Web site projects for a consulting firm. His last computer job ended in August 2002, and McCullough said he has no plans to pursue a job in another part of the country.
"We're going to make this place work, one way or another," he said.
But the transition has not been easy. His wife, Joanne, is pulling in some money from her home-based floral shop. It also helps to have their oldest son, Bobby, 17, working. With every penny counting, the family has eliminated all the extras it used to take for granted: vacations, dinners out, "all the fun things in life," McCullough said.
Some Triangle loyalists have downsized every aspect of their lives while waiting for a break that might, or might not, come.
Survival work
Michael Janas, 55, a former human resources executive with accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers, sold his 3,000-square-foot home in Holly Springs last year and moved into a townhouse in Raleigh with his wife and 21-year-old son, hoping that his luck would eventually turn around.
Today, 18 months after he was laid off, he is bagging groceries at Lowes Food in Cary for $7.75 an hour while he continues to look for a job in his field. All his savings, including his retirement, are gone.
"I will not go back north," insisted Janas, who relocated with his family to the Triangle five years ago. "It's too expensive, and at my age I really don't want to be in cold weather. When we moved here from New Jersey, we saved 30 percent on our living costs."
Janas has found plenty of job leads in other states. But he continues to focus his search on the Triangle, waiting "for things to turn loose."
Greg Bennett, a corporate headhunter for MRI-Sales Consultants of Raleigh, has been encouraged by a recent uptick in information technology sales and marketing jobs in New England and the Midwest, including the Chicago area. Everybody except people in the Triangle seem willing to relocate across the country for these new jobs, he noted.
"People in this area seem to be so much more stubborn about staying here," he said. "And I don't blame them. I love it here, too."
Reputation vs. reality
But Bennett is mystified by the Triangle's continued high ratings in magazines that rank the quality of living in regions nationwide. He believes such publications have contributed to a continued influx of people to the area during weak economic times.
The most recent Triangle booster was an article in the March issue of Business 2.0 that singled out the Raleigh-Durham area as America's No. 1 "boom town," citing, among other things, the region's relatively low unemployment rate -- 3.9 percent in January.
"What are they seeing that I'm not?" Bennett asked. "Yes, jobs are being created, but they're not the same jobs that we lost. People are working at McDonald's."
The Triangle is being hurt today by the fact that most large employers here have their headquarters somewhere else, he said.
"This market, because of what it is and where it is from a sales and marketing perspective, will always be a secondary market," Bennett said. "Boston, Philadelphia -- those are the markets where companies will put salespeople when they staff up. Or they cover Raleigh out of Washington."
Ray Owens, a senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond, Va., likened the Triangle economy in the late 1990s to the California Gold Rush.
"That kind of environment is not sustainable," he said. "That doesn't necessarily mean that Raleigh-Durham won't see another day in the sun at some point."
But he also cautioned that deep structural changes in the economy, including a decline in high-tech jobs nationwide, will continue to force people here either to switch careers or to relocate.
Staying put
With two months to go before his savings run out, Ron Russell is open to any opportunity.
Russell, a Chicago transplant and father of three teenage children, was a supply-chain manager for a forestry equipment manufacturing company in Zebulon before his luck turned nearly a year ago. It was the first time in his 36-year career that he had been out of work.
But Russell also might stay in the Triangle, not because he refuses to leave, but because he can't afford to move. As the booming economy of the late 1990s disappeared, so did generous moving expenses offered by companies eager to hire.
Russell, who lives in Granville County near Wake Forest, says he has been unable to pursue promising job leads in cities such as Houston and Atlanta because he can't relocate on his own dime. He is considering doing contract work for the government in Iraq and Afghanistan to support his family.
"It's not my first choice," he said. "But I've got to feed my family."
This is very true. So-called transplants (businesses lured to locate a branch far from headquarters) are fickle business partners.
They're great in good times, but the branch will be the first to suffer in bad. Communities will always be wiser to provide a healthy business climate for local businesses to start and to grow.
Not only will they be more likely to stick around when things get rough, but the profit will stay in the community.
Of course, many small companies don't make big headlines for politicians like one big fish landed.
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