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    North Carolina Triad Tries to Reinvent Its Economy

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    Scott Kidd didn’t expect a terribly busy job when he became the town manager of Liberty, N.C., a onetime furniture and textile hub whose rhythms more recently centered on a yearly antiques festival.Those quiet times, less than three years ago, soon became a whirlwind. Toyota announced it was building a battery factory on the town’s rural outskirts for electric and hybrid vehicles, and since then Mr. Kidd has reviewed ordinances, met with housing developers and otherwise sought to meet the needs of a seven-million-square-foot facility.The flurry of activity reflects new investments in a region of North Carolina that has lagged behind: the Triad. The average income in Randolph County, which includes Liberty, is $47,000, and some jobs at Toyota will offer an hourly wage comfortably above that. More people moving into the area could breathe life into Liberty’s downtown.But the potential dividends for the area — which includes Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point, in the center of the state — depend on equipping its workers with the skills needed for those new jobs. Mr. Kidd worried that many local workers lacked the education and skills to work at the plant.For those jobs, “they don’t write anything down — they put it in a computer,” Mr. Kidd said. “And if you don’t know how to do that, you kind of get x-ed out.”At the same time, some residents and local leaders who welcome the new industries worry about maintaining the area’s character, lest it become like the rapidly growing — and expensive — sprawls elsewhere in the South.“We don’t want to be Charlotte,” said Marvin Price, executive vice president of economic development at the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce, referring to the banking center 100 miles down Interstate 85. “We want to be the best version of Greensboro.”Like many states, North Carolina has drawn on new federal and state incentives to attract more advanced manufacturing and clean technology businesses. And the Triad, built on the tobacco, textile and furniture industries, is trying to pivot toward advanced manufacturing, offering a potential blueprint to other regions whose economic engines sputtered with globalization and the rise of automation.When it opens next year, Toyota’s Liberty factory will make batteries for vehicles built in Kentucky. Ten minutes away in Siler City, Wolfspeed, a semiconductor manufacturer, is building a factory with a $5 billion investment. Toyota has been awarded almost $500 million in incentives and tax breaks from the State of North Carolina, while federal legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the CHIPS Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act have enticed investment.“The Biden administration policies have helped North Carolina and especially the Triad become a clean energy epicenter in this country,” Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said at a recent event in Greensboro.Toyota is building a battery factory for electric and hybrid vehicles on the rural outskirts of Liberty.A former furniture factory is being used as a warehouse in High Point, N.C., which is part of the Triad region.For decades, the Triad has been the state’s manufacturing base. High Point became known as the home furnishings capital of the world, with the city and surrounding areas accounting for 60 percent of the country’s furniture production at their peak. Along with furniture, Greensboro and Winston-Salem specialized in textiles and tobacco. And while the Research Triangle of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill had renowned universities in the University of North Carolina, Duke and North Carolina State, the Triad had Wake Forest University.But like many manufacturing regions, its fortunes started to decline in the 1970s. Jobs in textiles started being moved overseas or automated, furniture contracted with the arrival of cheaper Chinese imports, and tobacco contracted because of a decline in smoking. Mills shut down, sitting vacant for decades, and downtowns languished.At the same time, the economy of the Triangle, which had the country’s largest corporate research park, took off as research and tech companies grew. In 2001, the Research Triangle and the Triad had roughly the same economic output; by 2021, the two had diverged. Both regions gained population, but the Triangle grew faster, buoyed by growing numbers of college-educated workers.Some industries have received a lifeline in recent years: Furniture boomed during the height of the pandemic from increased demand for home furnishings, and manufacturing has been resurging across the country. But hundreds of workers lost their jobs last year with the shuttering of several factories.“This area of the state has found itself in a situation where it has to diversify,” said Jerry Fox, an economics professor at High Point University. “This is an opportunity for people in our area to have better-paying jobs.”Signs of change are evident in downtowns. In High Point, a hosiery mill sat vacant for decades, opening only for biannual furniture showrooms. But in 2021, a group of local investors joined with the city’s Chamber of Commerce and a local foundation that donated more than $40 million to convert the site to a co-working space, Congdon Yards. Today, it houses around 50 employers and 360 employees.The Congdon Yards co-working space in High Point occupies a former hosiery mill.The former mill is now home to dozens of employers and hundreds of employees.The space sat vacant for decades before investors came together to raise funds for the conversion.The former R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company factory in Winston-Salem is now part of the Wake Forest Innovation Quarter.Mike Belleme for The New York TimesSimilar projects have been undertaken in Winston-Salem and Greensboro. In downtown Winston-Salem, old cigarette factories have become the Wake Forest Innovation Quarter, a research-focused district that cost more than $500 million. In Greensboro, one of the city’s oldest textile mills has been converted into a mixed-use complex, with amenities like a pizzeria to go along with office space.Still, challenges remain.One is preparing the region’s workers for jobs that require different skills. Thomas Built, a bus manufacturer based in High Point since 1916, has been making electric buses over the past decade. It has nearly 2,000 employees in High Point, making it one of the city’s top employers.Kevin Bangston, the chief executive of Thomas Built, said the company had hired more than 300 workers over the past 15 months. But he has found it difficult to hire for more skilled jobs that handle automated processes in the factory.“Demand is very high for those positions, and supply is very low,” Mr. Bangston said.Key to that transition is the role of work force development programs, which involve partnerships between businesses and community colleges to provide the skills to work in advanced manufacturing.One school offering such training is Guilford Technical Community College, the site of Mr. Cooper’s Greensboro appearance. At the same event, Jill Biden, the first lady, highlighted what she saw as the importance of such programs to enacting President Biden’s economic agenda.The school offers apprenticeships, enabling students to work while earning an associate degree. One program, designed by Toyota, aims to qualify workers for jobs at the company.Guilford Technical Community College’s campus in Greensboro, N.C., where students learn skills they can use in advanced manufacturing jobs.Students at the school learn about electricity, motor controls and the components of car batteries.Devante Cuthbertson joined the apprenticeship program at Guilford Tech last year.The president of Guilford Tech said the arrival of Toyota had increased interest in the school’s programs.Devante Cuthbertson, 28, grew up in Greensboro and was working for a flooring company around 30 minutes away as a machine operator, but he left that job in 2023 to join the apprenticeship program at Guilford Tech. There, he takes classes twice a week and goes to the Toyota battery plant site three times a week for an apprenticeship program, applying classroom learning about electricity, motor controls and the components of car batteries.“I wanted to ensure I had an education,” said Mr. Cuthbertson, who said he intended to apply for a job at Toyota as a maintenance technician when he graduates in 2025.Anthony Clarke, the president of Guilford Tech, said the arrival of Toyota — with the promise of high-paying jobs — had boosted interest in the school’s programs.“Any time employers stand up and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got really good-paying jobs,’ students pay attention to that, and they flock to that,” Dr. Clarke said.Economic development leaders and elected officials have cited the area’s affordability as a draw for companies and workers alike, particularly as housing costs have skyrocketed nationally. According to Zillow, the average home valuation in the Triad’s three main cities is around $250,000, compared with more than $300,000 for the state as a whole and more than $400,000 in the Triangle.The Triad has become a destination for some college-educated workers leaving coastal cities. Along with her husband, who worked for Nike, Melissa Binder left Portland, Ore., in 2019 for Winston-Salem to raise their child. They bought their house for $315,000 in 2019, and Ms. Binder said it offered more space than the house they owned in Portland.After renting in New York’s West Village for several years, Julia and Ryan Hennessee knew they wanted a home to raise a family. In 2018, they chose Winston-Salem to be close to Mr. Hennessee’s family and bought a single-family home for $445,000.The Hennessees said they welcomed the growth offered by the arrival of companies like Toyota. At the same time, they want Winston-Salem to retain the smaller-town charm that drew them to the region — as well as the cost of living — and not become like other Southern cities.“Winston knows how it’s different from a place like Atlanta, and doesn’t have aspirations of becoming that,” Ms. Hennessee said.Julia and Ryan Hennessee moved to Winston-Salem from New York City in 2018.The Triad has become a destination for some college-educated workers leaving coastal cities. But for others in the Triad, particularly in more rural parts like Liberty, the transition could prove more challenging.Brenda Hornsby Heindl, a librarian in Liberty, said the Toyota plant could improve the town’s fortunes. But primary education in the county remains underfunded, she said, and literacy levels are lower than the state average.“While my goal for the future of our community is that anyone could apply as an engineer at Toyota, right now we’ve got adults and kids that couldn’t read an application,” Ms. Hornsby Heindl said. “It’s going to take more than Toyota to have that happen.” More

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    VW Workers in Tennessee Start Vote on U.A.W., Testing Union Ambitions

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    The United Automobile Workers hopes contract gains at the Big Three carmakers will provide momentum in a broad effort to organize nonunion plants.Last fall the United Automobile Workers union won big pay increases from the Detroit automakers, and the impact rippled quickly through the nonunion auto plants scattered across the South.Afterward, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, Nissan, Hyundai and Tesla raised wages for their own hourly workers in the United States, none of whom are unionized. On production lines in Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and elsewhere, those pay increases have been referred to as the “U.A.W. bump.”Now 4,300 workers at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., will test whether the union can achieve an even greater bump. On Wednesday, they begin voting on whether to join the U.A.W., and the prospects of a union victory appear high. About 70 percent of the workers pledged to vote yes before the union asked for a vote, according to the U.A.W.“I think our chances are excellent,” said Kelcey Smith, 48, who has worked in the VW plant’s paint department for a year and is a member of a committee working to build support for the U.A.W. “The energy is high. I think we are going to nail it.”Volkswagen has presented reasons it believes a union is not needed at the plant, including pay that is above average for the Chattanooga region. But it has also said it encourages all workers to vote in the election, which is to conclude on Friday, and decide for themselves. “No one will lose their job for voting for or against the union,” a company spokesman said.The stakes go beyond the Tennessee plant, Volkswagen’s only U.S. factory. A victory there would add fuel to the U.A.W.’s push to extend its presence to the more than two dozen nonunion auto plants in the United States, mostly clustered in Southern states where union resistance has been strong historically, and where right-to-work laws make it hard for unions to organize workers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    U.S. Employers Added 303,000 Jobs in 39th Straight Month of Growth

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    The March data increased confidence among economists and investors that robust hiring and rising wages can continue to coexist while inflation eases.Another month, another burst of better-than-expected job gains.Employers added 303,000 jobs in March on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department reported on Friday, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.8 percent, from 3.9 percent in February. Expectations of a recession among experts, once widespread, are now increasingly rare.It was the 39th straight month of job growth. And employment levels are now more than three million greater than forecast by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office just before the pandemic shock.The resilient data generally increased confidence among economists and market investors that the U.S. economy has reached a healthy equilibrium in which a steady roll of commercial activity, growing employment and rising wages can coexist, despite the high interest rate levels of the last two years.From late 2021 to early 2023, inflation was outstripping wage gains, but that also now appears to have firmly shifted, even as wage increases decelerate from their roaring rates of growth in 2022. Average hourly earnings for workers rose 0.3 percent in March from the previous month and were up 4.1 percent from March 2023.Wage growth continues to slowYear-over-year percentage change in earnings vs. inflation More

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    California $20 Fast-Food Minimum Wage Is Coming April 1

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    The nation’s highest state minimum wage for fast-food workers takes effect on Monday. Owners and employees are sizing up the potential impact.A decade ago, Jamie Bynum poured his life savings into a barbecue restaurant now tucked between a Thai eatery and a nutrition store in a Southern California strip mall.As a franchise owner of a Dickey’s Barbecue Pit, Mr. Bynum is pridefully particular about the details of his establishment — the size of the hickory wood pile on display near the entrance, the positioning of paper towel rolls on each table, the careful calibration it takes to keep his restaurant staffed 10 hours a day with a small crew.The staffing, he said, has become harder in recent years, as the state’s minimum wage has steadily increased since 2017, often rising by a dollar per year. Today, it’s $16 an hour.But on Monday, it will jump to $20 an hour for most fast-food workers in California, propelling them to the top of what minimum-wage earners make anywhere in the country. (Only Tukwila, Wash., a small city outside Seattle, sets the bar higher, with a minimum wage of $20.29 for many employees.)The ambitious law, which supporters hope to see replicated nationwide, has been characterized by opposing sides in stark terms. To backers, it is a step toward fair compensation for low-wage workers who faced significant risk during the pandemic. To opponents, it is a cataclysmic move that will raise food prices, lead to job losses and force some franchisees to consider closing.“People don’t understand that when wages rise, so do the prices,” Mr. Bynum said.Mr. Bynum has, in recent years, raised prices to try to maintain profit margins — and each time, he said, he has noticed a drop in customers. That, in turn, forced painful decisions about cutting staffing and trimming hours.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Strike Madness’ Hits Germany While Its Economy Stumbles

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    A wave of strikes by German workers, feeling the sting of inflation and stagnant growth, is the latest sign of the bleak outlook for Europe’s economic powerhouse.For those striking at the gates of the SRW scrap metal plant, just outside Germany’s eastern city of Leipzig, time can be counted not just in days — 136 so far — but in the thousands of card games played, the liters of coffee imbibed and the armfuls of firewood burned.Or it can be measured by the length of Jonny Bohne’s beard. He vows not to shave until he returns to the job he has held for two decades. Wearing his red union baseball cap and tending the blaze inside an oil drum, Mr. Bohne, 56, looks like a scruffy Santa Claus.The dozens of workers at the SRW recycling center say their strike has become the longest in postwar German history — a dubious honor in a nation with a history of harmonious labor relations. (The previous record, 114 days, was held by shipyard workers in the northern city of Kiel who struck in the 1950s.)Jonny Bohne has vowed not to shave while on strike. It’s been awhile.Ingmar Nolting for The New York TimesWhile monthslong strikes may be commonplace in some other European countries like Spain, Belgium or France, where workers’ protests are something of a national pastime, Germany has long prided itself on nondisruptive collective bargaining.A wave of strikes this year has Germans asking whether that is now changing. By some measures, the first three months of 2024 have had the most strikes in the country in 25 years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    U.S. Employers Add 275,000 Jobs in Another Strong Month

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    Economists are trying to gauge whether forecasts of a slowing labor market were mistaken or just premature. For now, gains are consistent and strong.If the economy is slowing down, nobody told the labor market.Employers added 275,000 jobs in February, the Labor Department reported Friday, in another month that exceeded expectations even as the unemployment rate rose.It was the third straight month of gains above 200,000, and the 38th consecutive month of growth — fresh evidence that four years after going into pandemic shutdowns, America’s jobs engine still has plenty of steam.“We’ve been expecting a slowdown in the labor market, a more material loosening in conditions, but we’re just not seeing that,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief economist at High Frequency Economics.Previously reported figures for December and January were revised downward by a total of 167,000, reflecting the higher degree of statistical volatility in the winter months. That does not disrupt a picture of consistent, robust increases.At the same time, the unemployment rate, based on a survey of households rather than businesses, increased to a two-year high of 3.9 percent. The increase from 3.7 percent in January was driven by people losing or leaving jobs as well as those entering the labor force to look for work.A more expansive measure of slack labor market conditions, which includes people working part time who would rather work full time, has been steadily rising and now stands at 7.3 percent.Wage growth slowed slightly in FebruaryYear-over-year percentage change in earnings vs. inflation More

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    Brighter Economic Mood Isn’t Translating Into Support for Biden

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    Voters feel slightly better about the economy as inflation recedes, but partisan divides remain deep, a Times/Siena poll found.Eight months before the election, Americans feel slightly better about the state of the economy as inflation recedes and the labor market remains stable, but President Biden doesn’t appear to be benefiting.Among registered voters nationwide, 26 percent believe the economy is good or excellent, according to polling in late February by The New York Times and Siena College. That share is up six percentage points since July. The movement occurred disproportionately among older Democrats, a constituency already likely to vote for Mr. Biden.And the share of voters saying they approve of the job Mr. Biden is doing in office has actually fallen, to 36 percent in the latest poll, from 39 percent in July.Inflation has pervaded economic sentiment since mid-2022, confronting voters daily with the price of everything from eggs to car insurance. Even as inflation has been falling since mid-2023 — and wage growth has lately outpaced the rate of price increases, at least on average — many Americans don’t yet see the problem as solved. Nearly two-thirds of registered voters in the Times/Siena poll rated the price of food and consumer goods as poor.Mr. Biden’s team has pointed to an array of indications that the economy has rebounded remarkably well since he assumed office, including an unemployment rate that has been under 4 percent for two years and a stock market that has set record after record.But in a persistent trend that has confounded pollsters and economists, those fundamentals largely haven’t been reflected in surveys. Forty percent of those surveyed said the economy was worse than it was a year earlier, compared with 23 percent who thought it was better — even though a narrow majority rated their personal financial situation as good or excellent.

    Source: New York Times/Siena College poll of 980 registered voters conducted Feb. 25 to 28, 2024By Christine Zhang

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    How would you rate each of the following aspects of the economy today?
    Source: New York Times/Siena College poll of 980 registered voters conducted Feb. 25 to 28, 2024By Christine ZhangWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    After Gains at Big Three, U.A.W. Aims at Nonunion Plants

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    A looming union election at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga could determine the trajectory of union organizing at more than a dozen auto factories.When Shawn Fain, the United Automobile Workers president, unveiled the deal that ended six weeks of strikes at Ford Motor in the fall, he framed it as part of a longer campaign. Next, he declared, would be the task of organizing nonunion plants across the country.“One of our biggest goals coming out of this historic contract victory is to organize like we’ve never organized before,” he said at the time. “When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won’t just be with the Big Three. It will be the Big Five or Big Six.”Four months later, the first test of that strategy has come into focus, and it features a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn.According to the union, more than half of over 4,000 eligible workers have signed cards indicating support for a union. Workers say they have done so because they want higher pay, more paid time off and more generous health benefits — and because the recent strikes at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis persuaded them that a union can help win these concessions.“The Big Three, they had their big campaign, and their big strike and vote, and new contracts — we paid attention to that very closely,” said Yolanda Peoples, who has worked at the Volkswagen plant for nearly 13 years.The Volkswagen plant announced an 11 percent pay increase shortly after the strikes at the Big Three. The raise brought the top hourly wage for production workers to $32.40, but the comparable wage for the Detroit automakers will exceed $40 by the end of the new contracts. (Volkswagen said the wage adjustment was part of a yearly review.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More