NC Economy Assignment

NC Economy Assignment

Read the following

Abstract

In the first half of the 20th century North Carolina made the transition from agricultural intensive employment to manufacturing intensive employment. The growth of the furniture industry, large-scale movement of textile and apparel industries from the Northeast to North Carolina, and location of tobacco production near the raw material inputs drove this transition. These industries typically located in smaller cities and towns, producing the dispersed population and industrial base that characterized the state, without significant concentration in large cities. Industrialization was most concentrated in or near the Piedmont, with less industrialization in mountainous locations and coastal areas.

By the 1960’s North Carolina was one of the most industrialized southern states, although this employment was concentrated in lower wage and lower skill industries. Economic development policy generally consisted of providing roads, infrastructure, and access to lower cost labor. State per capita income stood at 71% of the United States.

Beginning in the late 1950’s and 1960’s North Carolina leadership began to shift policy to focus economic development on higher skilled, higher wage labor and technologically advanced industries This was fueled in part by a desire to increase wages and per capita income, and in part by recognition that technological innovation and global competition would in time reduce the demand for labor intensive, lower skill production. State policy focused both on attracting new high skill high technology industries, and on stimulating the internal growth of emerging sectors including information technology and biotechnology. In the 1990’s North Carolina also increased its use of business incentives to attract more investment.

North Carolina accomplished this transition with three principal sets of policies:

• Increasing efforts to recruit new high skill, high technology and to stimulate the growth of new industry sectors;

• Improving workforce skills to fill the higher skill needs of the new industry.

• Spreading development more evenly across the state’s regions.

By the end of the 20th century, North Carolina had dramatically transformed its economy again, transitioning from the Big Three (textiles, furniture, and tobacco) to the Big Five (technology, pharmaceuticals, banking, food processing, and vehicle parts). (See Walden) Wages and skill levels rose accordingly. State per capita income climbed to 89% of the U.S.

An unintended consequence on this transformation was the greater concentration of investment and employment in urban areas, with the loss of jobs and incomes in smaller towns and rural areas. This generated place-based economic development policies beginning in the 1980s designed to spread the growing prosperity to rural and small town North Carolina.

Going forward, North Carolina’s challenge is to continually evolve economic development policy in the face of even more rapidly changing technologies, globalization, and growth of urban centers.

Next read page 4 and 5 from North Carolina Economy 1

1. What were the traditional industries associated with North Carolina’s economy?

2. How has the NC economy changed overtime in terms of dominant industries, workers associated, geographic location, and level of education required?

3. Why does the transition carry with it numerous problems?

4. How does the state government plan to deal with these issues (policy)?