New Book Takes Closer Look At Middle-Class Wage Crunch In NC

A new book suggests the collapse of middle-class jobs since the turn of the 21st Century has been worse in North Carolina than in the rest of the country. The Triad has been among the hardest hit.

The book is called "North Carolina Beyond The Connected Age: The Tar Heel State in 2050." It tries to predict several things, including the state's population, leading industries and the importance of education in the decades ahead.

Mike Walden is the author and an economist with N.C. State University. According to his research, more than two dozen communities from Morehead City to Boone have seen middle-class jobs paying between $45,000 and $69,000 decline during the period he studied.

“The Triad of course has been trying to alter its economy and has had some successes, but you can clearly see in the data this hollowing-out [is] much more pronounced in Winston-Salem and Greensboro than in Raleigh, the Triangle or in Charlotte."

Walden says the loss of textile, apparel and tobacco production jobs has been a driving force behind the middle class decline.

He says many of these workers were not retrained and often found work in lower paying jobs.

“What will our economy, what will our society look like if we don't have those middle-paying jobs?" says Walden. "Because they serve a purpose in not just linking those lower and higher paying jobs but they are the glue that keeps the job market and keeps people of different income strata together.”

Research suggests that North Carolina's future is contained in its cities. Walden predicts three million more people will call the state home by 2050. He says a third of North Carolina counties will lose residents, especially in rural areas.

And then there's the impact that technology could have on the economy. Walden expects declines among paralegals and retail associates, for example, but thinks there's opportunity in fields like logistics and medicine.

“It looks like we are going to face some big challenges, some big changes in the labor market,” he says. “Let's make sure we are ready for it this time and not repeat the mistakes we made in the first round of this in the 1990s and 2000s.”

Walden hopes that state and local institutions will be ready to retrain workers who lose those jobs in the decades to come to help strengthen the economy.

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