The Foothills Corridor: Chapter 2 - Parallel Declines
What the Rust Belt Tells Us About the Foothills
If the Foothills Corridor thought it was alone in its decline, it only needed to look north. The Rust Belt—spanning Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other former industrial powerhouses—offers a cautionary tale that runs eerily parallel to what unfolded in the western stretch of North Carolina. From the 1990s through the early 2020s, both regions endured economic collapse not because of individual failings, but because of systemic forces: globalization, automation, and policy decisions that treated labor as expendable.
From 1990 to 2020, U.S. manufacturing employment dropped from 17.7 million to 12.3 million jobs. More than five million positions vanished, many of them high-wage, high-skill jobs tied to communities built around one or two core industries. In the Rust Belt, it was autos and steel. In the Foothills, it was furniture, textiles, and fiber optics. And in both places, the collapse was devastating—and deeply personal.
The Rust in the Rust Belt
The term "Rust Belt" became shorthand for the devastation left behind when the core of American manufacturing unraveled. Cities that had been cornerstones of economic strength were reduced to cautionary tales.
Flint, Michigan, once a thriving hub for General Motors, saw its fortunes collapse as the auto industry contracted. Job losses gutted the tax base, leaving the city unable to maintain public services. The cascading failures affected everything from public safety to education, culminating in a notorious water crisis that became a national disgrace.
Youngstown, Ohio, a symbol of American steel, faced a catastrophic collapse beginning in the late 1970s. When the mills shut down, tens of thousands of jobs disappeared almost overnight. What followed was a wave of outward migration, rampant poverty, and a civic identity built more around loss than promise.
Erie, Pennsylvania, suffered a quieter but equally corrosive decline. Once anchored by appliance and plastics manufacturing, the city lost major employers to offshoring and corporate consolidation. Economic recovery efforts lagged, and Erie became emblematic of stalled potential.
Rockford, Illinois, had long been known for its expertise in precision manufacturing. As those industries thinned out, the city failed to transition effectively. What was once a prosperous metro slowly slipped into economic inertia, with limited replacement industries taking root.
Each of these cities faced the same underlying failure: they did not pivot. Their overreliance on a dominant industry left them vulnerable, and without diversification or investment in human capital, they were unequipped to weather global economic shifts.
The Data behind the Decline
By 2009, the Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton MSA had lost over 15,000 manufacturing jobs. The region's unemployment rate stood at 15.4%, comparable to Flint, Michigan (16.5%) and Detroit (14.9%)—two cities synonymous with industrial collapse. These weren’t just economic statistics. They were trauma indicators. It wasn’t just plants closing—it was families splitting up, houses foreclosed, and a rise in quiet desperation no chart could show.”The region had gone from full employment to survival mode in less than two decades.
The Milken Institute’s 2009 Best Performing Cities Index ranked Hickory 191 out of 200 metros. Five-year job growth placed it at 193rd. Wage growth? 195th. High-tech GDP growth? 130th. Manufacturing had dropped from over 50% of the local economy to 33%—still higher than most areas, but down sharply and painfully.
You see how how what happened here was a reflection of what was happening across the industrial the Midwest. Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania lost over 800,000 manufacturing jobs between 1990 and 2010. The Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton MSA lost over 15,000 manufacturing jobs. Youngstown, Ohio shed approximately 20,000 steel and manufacturing jobs.
This parallel underscores a shared vulnerability: economies overly reliant on single industries, left reeling by globalization and automation, with entire communities forced to grapple with not just economic loss but a fractured sense of purpose. There is a chart on the previous page showing the same story played out with a common thread: a single-industry economy evaporated, and civic cohesion began to break.
Yet while the Rust Belt’s decline dominated national headlines and political debate, the collapse of the Foothills Corridor barely registered beyond our borders. The Foothills decline unfolded in silence—no Time magazine covers, just empty mills and quiet exits. Our economic devastation was just as real—but the media, policymakers, and even academics largely ignored it, treating rural collapse as background noise rather than a national crisis.
Culture and Civic Collapse
The loss wasn’t just financial. In 2009, Hickory ranked near the bottom on national indices of creativity and innovation. According to Richard Florida’s Creative Class metrics, the city ranked 61 out of 63 metros in creative jobs, 48th in high-tech jobs, and 58th in diversity. These are key predictors of economic resilience—and Hickory lagged in every one.
With each plant closure, another wave of young people left. Civic organizations shrank. Church pews emptied. A place once known for craftsmanship and stability was now known for dislocation. What made it worse was the narrative that followed: that the region had somehow failed to keep up. That it had become irrelevant.
But this wasn’t failure. It was fallout.
Who Did It Better?
Some peer metros—cities similar in size and economic history—fared better. Peoria, IL, which had long depended on Caterpillar, ranked 43rd on the same Milken Index. It diversified into healthcare, higher education, and defense contracting. Wichita, KS rebounded from 192nd to 47th by leaning into its aviation legacy and investing in education and public-private innovation hubs.
These weren’t miracles. They were strategies. Both cities kept their industrial base but retooled it. They created flexible training programs, aligned with federal dollars, and invited new industry in—not just through tax breaks, but through real talent pipelines.
The Foothills Corridor had the ingredients—Lenoir-Rhyne University, Catawba Valley Community College, a strong base in fiber optics. But it didn’t connect the dots. It marketed itself on affordability and tradition while competitors marketed themselves on growth and innovation.
Even Within North Carolina
Within North Carolina, Hickory's performance in 2009 highlighted stark disparities. Among all Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the state, Hickory ranked at the very bottom in nearly every economic performance category. Raleigh, on the other hand, stood at #2 nationally in the Milken Institute Index due to its alignment with technology, research, and higher education. Charlotte ranked #26, fueled by banking, logistics, and its role as a corporate hub. Wilmington reached #6, having capitalized on coastal development, higher education, and a growing service economy.
Durham came in at #11, reinventing itself as a nexus for biotechnology and academia. Asheville was making gains through tourism, arts, and healthcare. Greensboro and Winston-Salem leveraged existing infrastructure to transition toward logistics and healthcare. Greenville, home to East Carolina University and a strong medical center, showed signs of economic resilience. Even Fayetteville, driven by Fort Bragg and defense contracting, had improved its standing.
North Carolina’s Largest Cities
https://www.bls.gov/regions/southeast/north_carolina.htm
Mid-sized North Carolina cities like Asheville and Winston-Salem faced many of the same structural challenges as Hickory—industrial decline, youth flight, and economic stagnation. Yet their responses offer a blueprint for how to reverse those trends.
Asheville leaned heavily into tourism and cultural development. Rather than market itself strictly as a place of affordability, Asheville branded itself as a destination—with vibrant arts districts, food culture, craft breweries, and outdoor recreation. The strategy worked. From 2000 to 2020, Asheville not only retained but attracted younger populations, entrepreneurs, and remote workers. According to the North Carolina Department of Commerce, Buncombe County experienced strong employment growth in hospitality, healthcare, and professional services, outpacing rural and even some urban counties.
Winston-Salem took a different path, focusing on long-term institutional alignment. Once a tobacco and textile powerhouse, it repositioned itself through Wake Forest Innovation Quarter—a public-private initiative that brought together health sciences, education, and entrepreneurship. This hub now anchors a growing innovation economy, particularly in biotech and data analytics. The city’s partnership with higher education and healthcare has allowed it to keep more young people after graduation and attract new talent through job opportunities and quality-of-life upgrades.
The common thread between both cities is intentional repositioning. They didn’t simply hope to recover—they architected a new identity. Hickory has comparable assets: strong fiber infrastructure, higher education institutions, a regional hospital, and proximity to Charlotte and the Blue Ridge. What’s missing is the bold vision. With a strategic push into creative placemaking, industrial design innovation, and targeted youth retention programs, Hickory could follow a similar trajectory. The region doesn’t need to imitate Asheville’s bohemia or Winston-Salem’s innovation district—but it must build something that competes with both in relevance and appeal.
In the early 2000s, Hickory was mired in an industrial monoculture. It was the only North Carolina MSA in the bottom quartile of the Milken rankings—an outlier not just nationally, but within its own state. The decline wasn’t inevitable; it was the result of strategic misalignment. While other cities adapted, Hickory did not.
The comparison wasn’t just a matter of ranking—it was a reflection of will. Cities like Raleigh, Durham, and Charlotte sought to modernize. Hickory clung to its past. And the cost of that decision was visible in every metric from employment to innovation capacity.
The Shared Path—and a Diverging Future
In both the Rust Belt and the Foothills, there was a shared story: dependence on a narrow economy, decimation by trade and automation, and collapse into civic doubt. But there’s a critical difference now—timing.
The Rust Belt has already weathered much of its storm. Its remaining communities are either reinvented or trapped. The Foothills, though still scarred, has advantages:
A location within 50 miles of a 2.5 million-person radius
A still-intact industrial base (roughly 30% of the economy)
Emerging infrastructure (fiber, logistics, trails, civic hubs)
Local colleges ready to serve as innovation partners
Lessons from the Rust Belt
1. Diversify or Decline: Cities that clung too long to a single industry became irrelevant. Those that welcomed adjacent sectors (logistics, tech, defense, healthcare) survived.
2. Use What You Have: Peoria didn’t import a new identity. It modernized Caterpillar and expanded educational partnerships. The Foothills can do the same with fiber, advanced manufacturing, and natural assets.
3. Invest in Culture, Not Just Capital: Places like Asheville succeeded by leaning into culture, not just industry. Hickory can take the same approach—celebrating craft, design, and authenticity as economic assets.
4. Leadership Matters: Every city that pulled out of collapse had visionary, risk-tolerant civic leadership. That means unifying around shared regional goals—not just competing for crumbs.
Conclusion: The Foothills Still Has a Choice
The lesson from the Rust Belt isn’t that collapse is permanent. It’s that recovery is earned. It requires strategy, unity, investment, and the courage to think long-term.
The Foothills Corridor wasn’t doomed to fall behind—it was allowed to. But the story isn’t over. Unlike Flint or Gary, Hickory hasn’t hit rock bottom. It still has leverage. It still has people who care. And it still has a shot to become the kind of place that future generations don’t flee—but fight for.
Collapse happened. Now the question is what comes next.
This chapter, rewritten from national parallels and hard-won lessons, is not just a history lesson. It’s a map—and one this region can still choose to follow.
(The Previous Chapter)
The Foothills Corridor: Intro & The Collapse - August 10, 2025
🔗 https://thehoundssignal.substack.com/p/the-foothills-corridor
This opening chapter confronts the economic and cultural dismantling of western North Carolina’s industrial backbone. Tracing the fall from manufacturing powerhouse to hollowed-out communities, it exposes the role of trade policy, corporate greed, and political neglect. It is both a reckoning with deliberate abandonment and a call to preserve the grit and craftsmanship that remain.