Storm Warnings in the Sun Belt?

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I wrote this column on March 29, 1983, when Michigan was in the midst of a horrific depression.  The rest of the country was in the midst of a recession, but, as always, manufacturing states like Michigan were hit harder than most.  The unemployment numbers in Michigan in 1983 reached 14.6%, a number not seen again until 2009.  The Midwest was known as the "rust belt" as more and more companies moved to the southern lower-wage "right-to-work" states. (The "Sun belt")

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Storm Warnings in the Sun Belt?

The March 29 [1983] issue of the Houston Chronicle carried 120 pages of employment ads.  No, that's not a typo. . . 120 pages.  It boasts the largest classified ad section of any paper in the country. (The same week's Detroit News carried 17 1/2 ad pages.)

Big things are happening in Houston and apparently the folks up north have gotten the word.  The Chronicle says that in the last six months, their Sunday sales in Michigan have leaped from 200 to 3,000 papers a week.

The Little Professor bookstore in Dearborn alone has a guaranteed sellout of their 1,000-plus weekly order--sometimes within the same day of arrival.  That in addition to their 800-900 copies of the Dallas Morning News.

At first it was kind of fun, those Houstonians being the big cheeses, but now they're wondering if 120 pages of employment opportunities isn't carrying southern hospitality a little too far.

There's consternation down there in oil country.  The front page headlines of that same issue of the Chronicle read, "New 'Okie' comes from Michigan and Houston is his California".

Inside, article headlines read: "New 'Okies' swarm from Michigan to Houston's job-rich land of plenty"; "Houston, Dallas papers snapped up in Michigan"; "Snow Belt exodus--Why 1,000 a week stream here--jobs", and "Hillbillies in Michigan,Yankees here".

The gist of it all is that the jobless from the north are swarming into Texas without so much as a hint of a job.  They're coming in vans and pickup trucks containing all their worldly goods, "assuming", said one spokesman, "that the streets are paved with gold".

Well, they are paved with gold for the professionals, the engineers, the accountants, the chemists and the computer experts, but for the run-of-the-mill factory worker, they want it made clear there just aren't any factories down there.  At least not yet.

And if, by some chance, the factory worker is fortunate enough to find a job similar to the one he left, he can expect to make anywhere from $5 to $10 an hour less than he made in Michigan.  There are few unions down there and they seem to like it that way.

I did a little rundown on the 120 pages of ads and this is what I came up with:

Professional (managers, supervisors, consultants, etc.)  22 pp.

Engineering-Technical  20 pp

Data Processing (computer operators, programmers, etc.)  10 pp

Admin. - financial (accountants, auditors, analysts)  5 1/2 pp

Sales  7 1/2 pp

Office - Clerical  25 pp

Crafts-skills-trades (machinists, toolmakers, welders)  9 pp

Medical  8 pp

Misc.  (hairdressers, food service, maintenance, etc.)  13 pp

Good news for teachers is that there a shortage in Texas critical enough so that they are combing the northern countryside for candidates.  Clericals are in such demand that, if I can believe the personnel placement ads, beginner receptionists can start at $10,000 to $12,000 a year.   (1983 dollars)

That's the good news, if you happen to be one of those people.  The bad news is that Houston hasn't yet made ready for all of their guests.  The housing boom of two years ago is fast becoming a shortage and  the small-townish mass transit system is woefully inadequate, making horrendous traffic jams a way of life.  Sewage and flooding problems are keeping maintenance crews working overtime.

In addition, the city of Houston is regularly running TV ads pleading for additional police recruits to help with the growing crime problem.

Still, with all its faults, a city in the sunny southwest with a newspaper that can carry 120 pages of employment ads has to look pretty good to someone out of work in Detroit with no likely prospects.  And Houston wants you.  That's clear.  They're even going so far as to retrain in some instances.  But they're also asking that you take your time, do a lot of research, and don't burn all your bridges behind you.

Clearly, this is a big step to take--and more and more of you are taking it.  So maybe we should talk some more about this.  Have you been to Texas, or are you planning to go?  Do you have a job waiting?  Do you know someone who is down there now?  Are they making it?  What are they doing?

Write me in care of this newspaper and we'll do a local follow-up in a few weeks, if the response is there.

(Note:  I heard from one guy who said he was going down and would let me know how it was when he got there.  Never heard from him again.)

Unemployment: Who's to Blame? (1980s)

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>The problems began in the auto industry. The Big Three automakers -- Ford, Chrysler and General Motors -- built 9.3 million vehicles in 1978. Three years later they built only 6.2 million. Their losses were the worst in the industry's history. There were two culprits: a severe nationwide recession and cheaper imports from Japan. Between 1978 and 1981, 300,000 auto jobs were lost. With fewer cars sold, fewer parts and less steel was required. By the end of 1981, Michigan's unemployment rate stood at nearly 13%, while the national average was 8%. Business and personal bankruptcies tripled. Mortgages went unpaid, medical bills mounted, soup kitchens proliferated. Laid-off workers were hard-pressed to find any kind of employment. Living in the Rust Belt proved impossible for many, who packed up their families and migrated to the Sunbelt. At times there seemed to be as many Michigan license plates as Texas ones on the streets of Houston, only one of several southwestern cities that boomed in the first half of the decade. (Living in the Rust Belt)

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This is a piece I wrote in 1982. Ronald Reagan was president, interest rates and oil prices were high, outsourcing had begun, and nearly the entire country was in a recession. But in Michigan it was an all-out depression. We were one of the Rust Belt states and thousands of our auto workers were leaving the state looking for work, mainly in the Texas oil country. Our State Joke was "Will the last one out of Michigan please turn out the lights?" Others took it up as their own, but I remember it starting in beautiful, devastated Michigan:

Unemployed: Who's to Blame?

I didn't catch all of "Donahue" the other day, and maybe it was a good thing, because what I did catch really threw me.

His entire audience was made up of unemployed workers. His entire panel, likewise. As near as I could tell, Donahue was the only person in the group who had a job. But that wasn't what threw me.

What threw me was where those out-of-work auto and steel workers laid the blame. They didn't blame management for greed and stupidity. They didn't blame the government for greed and stupidity. They didn't even blame the Japanese--much.

They blamed welfare cheats.

They could barely control their rage as they talked about them: The so-called "men" who would rather be on welfare than do an honest day's work; the mothers who kept having babies so they could make more money off of the taxpayer; young people getting married and starting families without a thought to where the money was coming from.

They went on and on--the gist of it, if I got it right, being that the entire economic breakdown of this country came about because of welfare cheats.

The men talked about their lives now. About what it felt like to stand for hours in an unemployment lines. What it felt like to sit around and do nothing. What it felt like to watch their wives go off to work for a half or even a third of what the men could make if they could only get their jobs back. Some of them, as they talked, were close to tears.

Nobody could take away their right to be mad. Nobody wanted to. But what sat me upright was the direction it took. They weren't mad, for instance, at the heads of the corporations for whom they had formerly worked. They saw no problem with the fact that, though they were out of a job--due, supposedly, to declining profits--those same corporations still showed colossal end-of-year profits, and the corporation heads--the very same who had decided the out-of-workers' fates--still wined and dined in splendor and had no intention of giving up even one little country club membership.

They saw no problem with the fact that out-and-out greed kept the interest rates so criminally high that, even with a job, they couldn't afford a house or a car or any big-ticket item.

They placed no blame on the powers-that-be who decided on a staggering $10,000 as a nice round figure for a brand-new, no-frills, no-nothing standard mode of transportation. (Remember, this is the 1980s!)

None of that, even though it was discussed, was important. What was important to them was that there were people out there getting money from the government who didn't deserve it.

If it weren't for them taking money that wasn't rightfully theirs, one man said, therw would be more money to go around for the people who really need it.

"Why don't they go out and work?" the unemployed-man-with-no-prospect-for-a-job wanted to know.

Did those unemployed workers feel that, unless they made it clear, we would think they were one of them? Did they somehow think that, even though the money they were collecting while being out of work was money earned and due them, they were still "cheating" in some way? Or did they honestly think the poorest of the poor were really the bad guys in all of this?

Is that the American way of life now? The rich get richer and the poor get the blame?