Sharing the pain: No region is a refuge as layoffs spread across the state, taking their toll of both high-tech and low-skill jobs.

• Author: Murray, Arthur O.
• Position: Regions

North Carolina's recent economic success hasn't been shared evenly. The state's eastern and western reaches have long lagged Charlotte, the Triangle and the Triad, despite state incentives designed to lure businesses to less affluent counties. But lately economic pain, as represented by increases in unemployment, has been spread around. From October 2000 to October 2001, the state's overall unemployment rate increased from 3.8% to 5.4%. It increased in 81 counties, fell in 16 and stayed the same in three.

But only one of the state's seven economic-development regions registered an unemployment increase in every county. And, no, it wasn't North Carolina's Southeast, where a layoff by Delaware-based E.I du Pont de Nemours in June put 525 out of work in Pender County and a Carolina Mills factory closing idled 320 in Robeson County in October. And it wasn't the Piedmont Triad Partnership, where Greensboro-based Burlington Industries and Guilford Mills laid off about 1,800 between them as textiles and furniture making tanked.

It was the Research Triangle Regional Partnership, standard bearer of the high-tech industry that some economic developers say represents the Tar Heel state's future. Techie reputation aside, this partnership always has been a gumbo of new economy and old. RTP and the trio of top-flight universities, clustered in Wake, Durham and Orange counties, co-exist with tobacco farms and textile mills in counties such as Harnett, Person, Vance and Warren.

That mix of circuitry and sod, some boosters claimed, would make the region recession-proof. If one end sagged, the other wouldn't. Wrong.

As the economy went into a recession in March, orders...