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State seeking new economy

Submitted by: John Warner on Dec 31, 2005 at 6:01 am Tagged with: Economics, Miscellany Source:

S.C. struggling for direction as its longtime mainstay manufacturing continues decline
By JACOB JORDAN
The Associated Press

As a poor, agricultural state, South Carolina and its farmers struggled to make ends meet in the late 1800s. Then, cotton gained steam, and by the mid-1900s fibers woven in textile mills created thousands of jobs that buoyed the state until the final decade of last century.

But with most of the low-cost manufacturing jobs already overseas or soon headed there and no reliable agricultural industry to speak of, South Carolina is searching for a new economic identity to help pull it out of an employment slump.

The latest figures show the Palmetto State’s unemployment rate at 7.1 percent, third-highest in the nation, behind only hurricane-ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi.

“Economic development now is struggling to find its way,” said Frank Hefner, an economist at the College of Charleston. “More of the same is not going to work because you can only get so many BMWs.”

The German automaker has been held as the state’s economic jewel since the company located its first North American plant in Greer in 1992 after being wooed by then-Gov. Carroll Campbell.

BMW’s plant formed an economic cluster creating many more jobs than initially expected, but the cluster alone can’t sustain the state’s economy. Officials hoped other industries would create similar domino effects, such as with Vought Aircraft Industries at the Charleston International Airport or new missions at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, but those don’t compare to the automotive cluster.

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