National Public Radio will profile the devastated economy in Lenoir in a nationally broadcast three-part series that airs this week.
The city has lost thousands of furniture manufacturing jobs in recent years, as factories including Broyhill have shut down or moved their operations to China.
It was common in past decades in Lenoir for students to drop out of high school to go straight to jobs in the furniture factories. Now, those workers are trying to get GEDs and find new jobs.
Lenoir is getting a data center from search engine giant Google. The NPR series will attempt to explain who gets the new jobs and why.
NPR says the series includes:
Wednesday: Furniture workers in North Carolina have been hit with devastating job losses as factories and jobs have moved to China. But there's been some unexpected hope for laid off workers in hard-hit Caldwell County.
Thursday: When Google announced it was going to set up a big data center in Caldwell County, the competition for jobs there was fierce. Many laid off furniture workers in Lenoir took re-training classes in information technology. NPR followed several of them over two years to find out who made it and who didn't.
Friday: Caldwell County was once a vital part of the world's furniture industry. But some 6,000 jobs have been lost there in the last decade as manufacturers moved operations to China. For Chinese workers, these jobs provided steady income and a higher standard of living. But when the recession hit in the U.S., the Chinese factories started to shut down, too.
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