A pair of local blogs have a story tonight (unconfirmed by a “real” news source as of yet) that a local GM dealer is among the victims of downsizing by General Motors.
Assuming the rumor is true, this means another possible loss of dozens of jobs from a local business. Yet I don’t hear a lot of wailing or gnashing of teeth from local or state political leadership. Compare that with the pout-whine sequence many governors and affected local officials (including Governor Markell of Delaware) went into when they found out a local General Motors or Chrysler plant was marked for extinction. My recollection is that the GM plant in the Wilmington area employed about 450 people.
Now losing 450 jobs creates a sizable chunk of people thrown onto the unemployment rolls, but at the same time losing a half-dozen automobile dealerships can put a like number out of work. In recent months the Eastern Shore has lost a number of dealerships through consolidation or bankruptcy, yet I didn’t hear Governor O’Malley complain about the large loss of good-paying jobs. Maybe it was because they weren’t UAW members and generally good loyal Democrats?
This is also going to lead me into a related article I’ll put up tomorrow. In the meantime, we all need to ask ourselves when the bloodletting in the job market will finally come to a halt. While the “official” national unemployment rate is hovering just over 9 percent, it’s certainly double-digit in our local area and even “shovel-ready” make-work jobs aren’t going to make enough of a dent to carry that number downward significantly.
It’s more ammunition for a call to make our region more business-friendly. Let’s hope that the elected officials who seem to be receptive to the idea of minimizing the tax bite suffered by residents also get an idea of policies to bring good private-sector jobs our way as well.
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