After manufacturing paper products for nearly 68 years, the Resolute Forest Products plant in Charleston, Tennessee, produced its last pulp and paper products on Jan. 13, and those employed in the paper operations have spent most of the past two weeks cleaning up the idled assets.
On Wednesday and Thursday, many of the 350 workers about to lose their jobs looked at a new job future by participating in job fairs at the Resolute site where other employers in the area came eager to hire the displaced workers.
"We have 60 job openings right now, and we hope to be able to fill them with many of those being laid off at Resolute," Ken Collins, the site director at the nearby Wacker polysilicon plant in Charleston, said during an interview Thursday.
Wacker was among 21 employers who came to Resolute to try to find workers amid a persistently tight labor market. Resolute spokeswoman Seth Kursman said in an email that 20 Resolute employees immediately landed jobs and more than 50 others are pursuing follow-up interviews.
John Gentry, mayor of McMinn County, Tennessee, whose father worked at Bowater for 37 years before he retired, said last month he laments the end of the paper-producing era at Resolute and its predecessor, Bowater. The company will continue making tissues with about 195 workers, but that is only a fraction of the 1,500 workers that were once employed at one of the nation's biggest newsprint and pulp plants.
"The silver lining in this is that it comes at a time when many employers are trying to find more workers, and I know many of those getting notice of these layoffs at Resolute will be offered other jobs almost immediately," Gentry said.
Although year-end job cuts pushed up unemployment slightly in Bradley County last month from its near-record low in November, the 3% jobless rate in Bradley County in December was still well below both the state and national averages.
Across the Chattanooga region, unemployment remained below the U.S. average in December of 3.7% in 13 of the 18 area counties.
"We continue to see employment and economic growth, and we expect that to continue into 2022," Bill Fox, director of the Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee, said in a phone interview last week.
Area jobless rates in December
Despite an increase in the unemployment rates across all counties in the Chattanooga region last month, 13 of the 18 area counties still had jobless rates below the U.S. average of 3.7% in December.— Catoosa, 1.8%, up from 1.6% in November.— Dade, 1.9%, up from 1.6% in November.— Walker. 2.1%, up from 1.8% in November.— Whitfield, 2.4%, up from 2.1% in November.— Murray, 2.6%. up from 2.3% in November.— Chattooga, 2.9%, up from 2.6% in November.— Bradley, 3%, up from 2.9% in November.— Hamilton, 3.2%, up from 3% in November.— Polk, 3.2%, up from 2.8% in November.— Franklin, 3.3%, up from 2.9% in November.— McMinn, 3.5%, up from 3.2% in November.— Marion, 3.6%, up from 3% in November.— Sequatchie, 3.6%, up from 3.3% in November.— Meigs, 3.8%, up from 3.5% in November.— Rhea, 4.2%, up from 3.8% in November.— Grundy, 4.4%, up from 4.1% in November.— Van Buren, 4.4%, up from 4% in November.— Bledsoe, 4.9%, up from 4.3% in November.Sources: Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, Georgia Department of Labor
After dropping to a 2-year low in November, the non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rates for counties rose last month across the Chattanooga region as more workers returned to the labor market and some employers trimmed their payrolls at the end of 2021.
The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development reported Thursday that unemployment increased in 87 of the state's 95 counties last month, but most of those increases were due to more people coming into the labor market again and other seasonal and pandemic forces that keep some people off of work in December.
Tennessee's labor participation increased to 60.6% in December, from 60.2% in November.
"When people join the labor force, they are typically unemployed, and that can drive unemployment rates up," Chris Cannon, assistant administrator and communications director for the state's labor department, said in a monthly labor report released Thursday. "While the number of employed individuals did increase during the month, which is consistent with seasonal hiring, the number did not grow enough to offset the labor force growth, which caused the county unemployment rates to inch upward."
In the six-county Chattanooga metropolitan area, employment declined by just over 700 jobs in December, but employment for all of 2021 in Chattanooga was still up by nearly 8,400 jobs from a year earlier. Nonetheless, employment in Chattanooga remained slightly below the peak levels reached at the end of 2019 before the pandemic slowed the economy.
Tennessee career centers listed 433,975 open jobs across the state on Thursday, or more than four times the number of unemployed Tennesseans seeking work last month.
Unemployment in the region remained highest at 4.9% last month in Bledsoe and Grundy counties, two of the nine counties in Tennessee still on the Appalachian Regional Commission list of economically distressed counties.
Jobless rates during December were lowest in the region south of the border in the counties of Northwest Georgia. While Georgia's jobless rate rose last month from the record low level recorded in November, Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said the state is still adding jobs across the state.
In metropolitan Dalton, unemployment rose three-tenths of a percentage point last month, but the 2.5% unemployment in the Carpet Capital was still well below the 3.7% U.S. jobless rate.
The labor force increased in Dalton by 344 and ended the month with 58,761, up by 1,784 jobs in the past 12 months. But while there are more jobs, the size of the labor force, which counts workers and those actively seeking employment, was still down by 34 people in Dalton from a year ago.
"Job numbers are up across Georgia, and our focus in 2022 is encouraging people to enter the workforce to help businesses provide the goods and services necessary for Georgia's economy to continue to grow," Butler said Thursday in his monthly report on county unemployment rates.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6340.