At the end of a panel discussion Tuesday at which representatives of local manufacturers were touting the benefits of a career in the field to educators, a teacher asked if any of companies was hiring.
Only one of the four companies represented said yes.
Local manufacturing plants have been hit hard by the recession much like businesses in other sectors of the economy and perhaps harder.
The number of people working in the sector in the Asheville metropolitan area — Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson and Madison counties — fell to 18,100 in August, the last month for which figures are available. That’s a decline of 4.2 percent since January and 12.1 percent since January 2008.
Those declines have been more rapid than those of the total work force for the four-county area. The number of workers fell 0.9 percent to 167,100 from January to August and is down 4.4 percent since January 2008.
But the current problems in the sector do not appear to be comparable to those that caused massive layoffs and plant closures across Western North Carolina from 2001-04.
Eyeing a rebound
Manufacturers still in the area should be able to add jobs as the economy rebounds, two local experts say, and some are already taking steps to do so.
The layoffs and closures at furniture, textile and apparel companies that made up the bulk of job closures earlier this decade involved jobs demanding fewer skills and less sophisticated technology, which made them more vulnerable to foreign competition, said Clark Duncan, director of business and industry services at the Economic Development Coalition for Asheville-Buncombe County.
“A lot of the low-skill, low-capital manufacturing work that our parents had has gone offshore and is not likely to come back,” said Duncan, whose job is to help manufacturers and other employers already located here.
Tom Tveidt, head of the research arm of the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, had a similar view.
“There has been an internal transformation” in the sector to more high-tech manufacturing that is less vulnerable to competition from overseas, even if it is also less labor-intensive, he said.
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