It’s better than you’d think
Published 9:03 pm Saturday, December 18, 2010
Just less than one in five in Dallas County is unemployed, but that’s better than where we have been
In some counties in Alabama’s Black Belt, one person out of every five in the so-called work force is without a job. Overall, the region reports the highest unemployment rates in the state each month, and even though reports and experts say times are improving, it is sometimes hard to see.
“Sometimes it doesn’t look like there is much improvement,” Wayne Vardaman, executive director of the Selma and Dallas County Economic Development Authority, said. “But when you really start looking at the numbers, we are making progress.”
Such progress showed up Friday with the release of November’s unemployment figures, showing Dallas County with an unemployment rate of 16.8 percent. That’s not that good until you compare it to the 19.9 percent unemployment the county reported last November.
That change, one of the more drastic year-to-year improvements in the region, doesn’t even reflect the most recent strong economic news on the manufacturing side of the economy.
Vardaman said the recent expansion news at Plantation Patterns and the new military contracts at American Apparel have yet to get up to speed, with each of those companies working to expand their workforces in the coming weeks.
The unemployment figure improvements also come during a year when there have not been any new industries added, but Vardaman said the stabilization of the local economy and workforce has been the biggest improvement.
“It seems we have really weathered whatever storm this recession has been,” Vardaman said. “Everyone has worked so hard to save existing businesses and help them thrive and expand. And, we are starting to see that work pay off.”
One other interesting figure is the number of people who commute into Dallas County each day for work.
According to a report from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, more than 2,800 workers commute to Dallas County each day, a figure Vardaman says shows the improving strength of the local economy.
Since October, the number of unemployed residents in Dallas County fell just slightly, but has dropped more than 500 since November 2009.
Vardaman also said the county has almost come back from significant swings in the manufacturing industry that resulted in a number of lost jobs in recent years.
“We’ve almost made it all the way back to where we were in 2003,” Vardaman said, pointing to a list of county manufacturers who at the time employed 3,774 people. “There has been a lot of work put in and we have seen great results.”
Some of the drastic changes on the negative side has been the loss of 624 jobs at Bush Hog, but Vardaman said efforts on the part of the company and local government and economic officials helped keep that company here.
“We would have lost all of it,” he said. “But we have been able to work with them and keep them in Selma.”
As of Friday, the tracking list used by EDA showed a total of 3,192 employed, 582 fewer than in 2003, but those figures do not count the expected hires at American Apparel and Plantation Patterns.
“Those two announcements haven’t shown up in these numbers yet,” Vardaman said. “But they will soon.”
As for the unemployment figures, Vardaman said they are far too high but not as bad as some might think.
“I would say today the news is more encouraging than discouraging,” he said.