I used to pass through Danville, VA from time to time and noted that it had once seemed busy but often seemed to have lots of empty industrial buildings.
For example:
The textile manufacturer Dan River, a former Fortune 500 company, once employed as many as 15,000 workers by some accounts. It began hemorrhaging jobs as it fought a losing battle against overseas competition. Now it employs fewer than 50. Big tobacco also lost business, slowing production in the warehouses that were Danville’s second-largest industry.
That’s not the case any more as today’s Washington Post notes.
The weakening dollar, rising transportation costs, and the other things we normally bemoan are making the US ripe for foreign investment and basically demanding that US workers be used to keep stores like IKEA in business.
New companies are moving in to breathe life into once-tired economies across the industrial corridor in central and southwestern Virginia and in Southside, a strip of generally poor counties in the south-central part of the state.
Like many factory towns, Danville was built on labor intensive industries where workers were as important as the machines. That’s changed in advance manufacturing where workers with low skills simply don’t fit the picture.
One of the companies moving there was a technical support firm with 750 jobs…
Now, here’s my question, how many jobs could be brought in that would be work at home jobs?
Another question this brings to mind is what opportunities for creating work at home businesses will emerge because things need to stay closer to home due to rising transportation costs? Here’s one list of 7…
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