North Carolina’s forestry industry, the top manufacturing sector in the state, has shed thousands of jobs while some in the industry are faced with less work, according to the state Forestry Association.
In 2007, the industry had 103,168 employees in forest manufacturing areas that include logging, wood products, furniture and paper, according to a forestry association release. That number decreased to 82,780 in 2009.
The overall number of manufacturing facilities improved from 2,554 in 2008 to 2,562 in 2009. But that’s still not as high as it was in 2007 when there were 2,742 manufacturing facilities in the state. The industry accounts for $6 billion of the state’s gross product and went from supplying $3.6 billion of the state’s wages in 2007 to $3.1 billion in wages in 2009.
Bob Slocum, executive vice president for the association, said he didn’t have specific statistics for the northeastern part of the state, but he knew that the closing of the International Paper Mill in Franklin, Va., would have far-reaching effects for both southern Virginia and North Carolina.
“I used to work up that way, and the economic impact of that mill was just huge in those counties,” he said. “...That’sa big blow to that part of Virginia.”
Loggers all over the state are facing low demand for their services as well as the lower prices that mills are willing to pay for logs.
“Their orders in terms of wood orders are down substantially,” Slocum said.
Some facilities like the Domtar plant in Plymouth are changing from producing paper to fluff pulp, and while the plant is able to stay open that way, it is losing about 150 jobs.
A mill in Haywood County wasn’t able to do that. T & S Hardwoods of Sylva closed in October of this year and was the largest employer in its county.
Slocum said almost every mill in the state has had to lay off workers though few have closed outright.
“Every sawmill I know is running at severely reduced levels,” Slocum said.
He said the area that has shown the most job loss is furniture manufacturing, which is largely due to the decline in the housing market and furniture manufacturers moving overseas.
As the economy slowed, goods producers had less use for packaging materials, so that area of forestry production has also slowed.
Slocum said the state’s forests, which are thriving now, benefit when there is a demand for wood products.
“One of the biggest incentives to keep land in forest and manage it is healthy markets for what we’re growing,” he said.
Though the news on the job front in the industry isn’t positive right now, his association believes that the forest industry will come back as the economy improves and the need for building materials and packaging rises.
“The good news is we have a plentiful and productive resource,” he said. “We have wood, and we can grow a lot more.”
