Ohio Steel Towns Falling by the Wayside
With the nation mired in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, millions of Americans are experiencing unemployment, financial instability and dwindling hope for the future. But for one dying city in northeast Ohio, those sentiments are nothing new.
While the recession is taking a major toll on Americans all across the country, it is simply adding insult to injury for the people of the Youngstown metropolitan area, according to The Washington Post.
“In this corner of northeast Ohio, from Warren to Youngstown, where the old steel mills along the Mahoning River stand like rusted-out mastodons in the weeds, the recession was a final cruelty piled on top of three decades of disappearing jobs,” The Washington Post’s Anne Hull writes.
Once the world’s fifth largest producer of steel, the city is now a shell of its former self. Gone are the giant mills and factories that employed hundreds of thousands and allowed the city and region to thrive. Today, many of those structures still stand - crumbling and idle.
The city, much like many other rust-belt cities, was devastated by the effects of globalization and increased free trade.
In 1974, around the time that globalization was beginning to take effect, 521,000 steel workers were employed in the metropolitan area. By 2000, those numbers had fallen to just 151,000.
All told during the decade, as steel mill after steel mill either closed down or moved away, the region lost some 50,000 manufacturing jobs, $414 million in personal income, and up to 75 percent of school tax revenues.
From there, things have went from bad to worse. Since the 1970s, each decade the city has lost at least 14 percent of its total population. The median family income is just $21,850 - the lowest of all American cities with a population between 65,000 and 250,000 and 18 percent lower than the closet city - and just under one-quarter of the population lives below the poverty line.
The local university - Youngstown State - is now the largest employer in the area.
“Before there was a so-called creative class, there were people who made light bulbs, water fountains, aluminum siding and electrical harnesses for cars,” Hull writes.
But no more. For those that aren’t part of the “creative class,” there is next to nothing left. In Youngstown, the unemployment rate is 14 percent, just a tick below the 15 percent unemployment rate registered in neighboring Warren, Ohio.
“In a place defined by work,” Hull writes, “there is little to be had.”
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This Work, Ohio Steel Towns Falling by the Wayside, by Dustin Ensinger is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.
Copyright © 2009 EconomyInCrisis.org
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Funny that I don't recall seeing any sad eulogies being written for our lost covered wagon factories. No public gatherings for the 8-track-tape factories relegated to history. No memorials for the DDT factories of old.
Look folks...progress happens. It's not the fault of the Chinese. WE obsolete businesses every time we create something new. 8-tracks nearly wiped out vinyl. Cassettes wiped out 8-tracks. CD's wiped out cassettes. iPods are wiping out CD's. And now we don't actually "make" anything anymore. Music is beamed effortlessly around the globe at the touch of a button. It's just the way things go if we want to live in a world of progress. We continually learn to build things faster and, usually, better at a lower cost. Sometime we figure out how to not build anything at all (besides a server farm to store music for download) That often means some competitors lose, and jobs are temporarily lost. This speeds up during recessions. It's just the way it is.
Michael,
When the 8-track tape became unpopular (because it sucked), the plants simply converted to cassettes. The same people continued to work. When DDT was banned, the plants converted to other chemicals, malathion, methyl-isocyanate, etc. The same people kept working.
When the Chinese started shipping ceiling fans to the United States, at one third the cost, the people who made ceiling fans were out of work, permanently. The factories were closed. The machines were sold for scrap metal. Those jobs will not be back and there is nothing we can retool for that the Chinese can't produce and deliver at one third the cost.
Everything that can be manufactured can and will be manufactured in Communist China at one third the cost. Every service that doesn't involve direct contact with the customer, or the customer's car, cat or cheeseburger, can and will be done in India at one third the cost.
Those "promising" biotech, nanotech and "jobs as yet to be invented" will also be done in China or India.
Manufacturing creates wealth by adding value to raw materials. This process requires massive amounts of labor. When we were manufacturing products here, we had to pay middle-class wages and benefits to people with only a high-school education. Now those people are earning a fraction of what they were earning in manufacturing. Many of them are working two or three jobs as they try to hang on to their middle-class lifestyles. Most of them were forced to "start over," at a point in their lives when it was most painful.
The only way to save or bring back manufacturing jobs would be to impose import duties on goods from Communist China. This would have to be done strategically, over a long enough period to allow U.S. manufacturing to rebuild and ramp up.
This is not going to happen. The Progressive Obama administration has no intention of allowing the middle-class to return. That would work against their goal to make more people reliant on the government and would thwart their plans to turn this country into a socialist Utopia.
Bruce Bishop
The only way to save or bring back manufacturing jobs would be to impose import duties on goods from Communist China. This would have to be done strategically, over a long enough period to allow U.S. manufacturing to rebuild and ramp up.
I could not agree more. Strategy is the key. EIC has shown how to achieve this. Unfortunately, the same workers in the government that survived many Presidencies are dumb enough to understand this. The two groups in our country are polarized to extreme left and right and causing the havoc you see. One group wants to increase government jobs like Greece because they have no idea how to create private and value added jobs. The other group wants massive private contractors so that they can be one after retirement making many times the money (see Washington Post article 'Top Secret America'). The same group also do not understand true production philosophy and hence supporting the outsourcing of America.
There are few smart people left in the government that wants a better America and influence the outcome.
It is depressing and grim picture of the present state of economy and employment. But, what to do? What is our duty at the present crisis? Should we sit back and shed tears or should we ponder over the wrong doings and strive for a change? But for me we should keep trying for the change,for better. Every thing is possible for a willing mind.Fruit Flower Arrangements
What will it take before we hold those in power accountable? They have tricked every AMERICAN into thinking that we are powerless to stop them.There were a million reasons why the banks and bankers needed our money rather than giving it to tax paying AMERICANS! This will come to a head sooner than later i fear and i can only hope were all ready.
WHAT WILL IT TAKE!
I remember attending my grandfather's funeral in Youngstown, along with my father back in the mid 1970's. Jones and Laughlin was dead even back then and so was Ambridge. Even in those days, when I was in my 20's I had a very strong feeling that something was going very wrong with the economy and the country as a whole. Now it is, as the first anonymous writer above has put it, indeed a 3rd world economy with no hope for a brighter future. In the meantime, Obama is having parties in the White House to the tune of two (on average) a week, replete with flowing liquor and lobster dinners for the attendies. This last part is information that is carried in the foreign media, not our own, of course.
What? This is supposed to be news? Hell, the Jones and Laughlin Steel mill was history 30 years ago. That Youngstown is history HAS BEEN history for a long time now. We are now a third world economy pretending to be a "world power'; kind of like a once well-to-do aristocrat selling tours of the mansion. We have a lot of people living in "Obamaville's"; the modern equivalent of the 1st depression "Hoovervilles".
By the time I talked to Jones and Laughlin Steel in mid 80's, after a successful process improvement of 400% with the Chinese steel companies - J&L pooh-poohed us. Same with Inland Steel and US Steel. At the time, the words "Business Process Reengineering" was not invented.
As we outsource manufacturing and keep importing more and more, this will be the new America. Get used to it.
I am from Warren Ohio...I grew up in this economically depressed area...a perfect example where financial capital & management tag teamed organized labor and begun the process of de-industrialization which started with the beginning of floating rates and the petrodollar phenomena...
MJC
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