Out of work: their plight rocked the state's political establishment. The unemployed are our Mover and Shaker of the Year.

• Author: Murray, Arthur O.
• Position: Feature - Column

Esther Lentz sighs, hushing the ticking of a clock in her sparsely furnished living room--a couch, two chairs, an ottoman and a 32-inch television on a wooden stand. The walls are cracked throughout her 1,400-square-foot house in Concord, but the paint is clean. The hardwood floors shine, a contrast to the dark mood.

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She sighs again. The words don't come easily. Neither will another job. She is 49, with no high-school diploma and few skills. Truth is, she's not even looking right now. Her energies go to renewing her unemployment payments, going to school and barely keeping afloat by cutting expenses wherever she can. "We're still making it," she says, brushing a strand of faded brown hair out of her face. "I don't know how."

She's one of more than 5,000 North Carolinians who lost their jobs when Kannapolis-based Pillowtex Corp., the state's 10th-largest manufacturer, closed July 30. Like Lentz, about 40% of them didn't finish high school.

While employment statewide was 3.8 million in October, roughly the same as it was a year earlier, jobs have churned. Nearly 13,000 textile jobs disappeared in 2003. So did about 3,400 furniture jobs. Some of the state's largest employers were vulnerable. R.J. Reynolds said in September it would lay off at least 1,600 tobacco workers in Winston-Salem. And the bleeding wasn't confined to manufacturing jobs in North Carolina's traditional industries. US Airways laid off 600 Tar Heels. IBM idled 90 in the Triangle.

Still, Pillowtex cried out as the largest single job loss in state history. A month later, a Republican North Carolina congresswoman flayed President Bush over textile losses. In October, a national poll by Chapel Hill-based FGI Research showed that, if the election were held then, 60% of voters would not return Bush to office. Their No. 1 issue: his handling of the economy. People across the country had finally noticed the job losses. And they feared being Esther Lentz. That's why the displaced worker is BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA's Mover and Shaker of the Year.

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The Pillowtex shutdown shouldn't have surprised anyone. The company had been struggling, and the state has been bleeding textile jobs for 30 years. Since 1973, 230,000--more than 60% of the state's textile and apparel jobs--have vanished. At first, it was because of modernization: machines replacing people. But since 1993, when the North American Free...