What's working?

• Author: McMillan, Alex Frew
• Position: Employment in North Carolina

When it comes to Tar Heel industry, a lot of things. But not the way they used to.

Jobs were very different when Gary Carlton was growing up in Kannapolis. His mom and dad worked in Cannon Mills for 45 and 55 years respectively. "Never got another job and didn't think that you were supposed to change jobs, either," the director of the N.C. Department of Commerce's Business/Industry Development Division recalls. Breaking that employer-employee trust, he recalls, was "one of the worst sins in the world."

In 1996, Carlton estimates, about 11,000 North Carolinians found out the hard way that things aren't what they used to be. More than 11,500 lost their jobs in 1995. Take a look at BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA's list of the largest employers in the state, and you'll see Cannon Mills' successor, Fieldcrest Cannon, with 8,000 employees, down 1,500 from last year. Sara Lee cut almost 3,000 jobs. Cone Mills and Collins & Aikman also moved down the list.

In fact, the man Carlton succeeded at Commerce, Watts Carr III, who's now president of Cone Mills' denim division, says the situation is even worse for textiles than people thought. Even the capital-intensive side of the industry, which North Carolina expected to retain, is having to move offshore to stay near its customers, the cut-and-sew operations. "I don't know if that was foreseen when NAFTA was approved," he says. As far as job creation goes, he adds, "I think you can discount textiles and tobacco."

Woes in textiles, tobacco and furniture are well-publicized, but that's not where the flux ends. "I don't care if you're a stockbroker, a banker or work in textiles," Carlton explains, "there...