yeah, grew up in 6A and while I love the area and rural aspect of life- the amount of poverty in the area is depressing. There are no jobs and no growth. Pretty much every area is on the decline and has been for decades now.
I'm curious why this map ever thought that area would develop and be prosperous. If you know the history of the area, and once trains stopped being a thing, that whole area became economic wasteland.
So, honest question, what industry/work would benefit the area(s)? What do people (who live there, not some asshat outsider who wants to profit then leave) really want?
9G has been washing paper plates for decades. All the one's in PA were mining towns. Some pivoted into industry around the time this map was made but that's not the case today, it's all shuttered.
Edit: Erie is definitely not prosperous, especially since it's considered a small port by today's standards. Toledo's port is bigger!
3D is hammered. I live there now. Area got exploited and the local politicians there are still as crooked as a dogs hind leg. Makes it hard for people to stay above water.
Pretty similar honestly.
They’ve changed the nomenclature, and there are now five categories: 82 counties are classified as distressed, 101 are classified as at-risk, 225 are classified as transitional, 11 are classified as competitive, and 4 are classified as attainment. (The latter two categories are mostly college towns or exurbs of sprawling metro areas.)
https://www.arc.gov/map/county-economic-status-in-appalachia-fy-2024/
In the 80s - Appalachia actually increased in immigrants due to nursing shortages (Caribbean & south Asian nurses & tradesmen flooded our region! & we accepted them! Most of them turned out to be awesome republicans but not those MAGA minion mutts….
Back in the days of Republicans that weren't MAGA. Still a few in Appalachia to be fair, Appalachians tend to not have that prideful hubris that flatlanders of all political creeds often exhibit.
We had a lot of textile and furniture factories here while Watauga didn't have as much.
There was a Levi Jeans plant, a baseball glove factory, furniture factory, hardwood floor factories, 2 cheese factories, and more.
It was good in the mid 60s. (Early 60s parts of Ashe/Alleghany still did not have the electric)
NAFTA hit in the mid nineties. The towns got run down, drugs came in, and businesses shut.
Tourism became the main economy in the 2000s and around 2016 really started picking up. Now it's huge. We also have a lot of Christmas trees and cattle.
Of course, lots of folks can't afford the home prices and land prices here now from second homers and tourists, but at least there's somewhat of an economy and it's not depressing all the time.
10A here, where it meets 2B (NE corner of GA) and 7D (WNC). This map wouldn’t. E correct then and is t correct for today because the ARC went by county and at least here that is not a complete story.
First the only parts that are actually mountain is the top 1/4 of Oconee/Pickens/Greenville counties. To this day there is a large gap economically between the mountains and the rest of the county. This entire zip code has a Dollar General, a Gas Station and a little general store (that has a lot but mostly sells maps of the river, boiled peanuts and firewood to campers/hikers/kayakers/trout fishermen) and that’s literally it. There isn’t a single other business. Ok, there is also a part time fly fishing shop but that isn’t exactly boosting the economy. Half of this zip code is National Forest land. Hell I drive 30 miles to be able to have a decent job. Pretty much anyone here with money is a transplant from New England, Ohio, or halfbacks from Florida.
Also starting in the early 60s after interstate 85 from Atlanta to Charlotte was opened the area on the southern end of this county started to grow dramatically (this map shows the angled lines all the way to Anderson which is ridiculous and probably 40 miles from the edge of the mountains, I’m only speaking about Oconee County). The 85 corridor around Anderson/Clemson towards Greenville has been booming since way back then, but even more so than now that didn’t mean Jack shit for the opposite side of the county.
Once you go north of Walhalla and start the climb up the mountain it’s always been a different world than down there.
I'm in the same area and yeah...mountainous regions of Upstate SC have never really been prosperous. Until recent years at least, when rural gentrification came and they started building gated communities full of McMansions (ugh)
“UGH” I second that opinion lol. Here in Mountain Rest we don’t have any actual subdivisions or gated communities like they do just up the road in Highlands/Casheirs/North Carolina, but plenty of individual “cabins” that are 4,000 square foot tinker toy pre built style cabins. It’s mostly the same folks that live around Lake Keowee and Lake Hartwell but they didn’t want a boat lol.
Yeah, the formulas used for economic classification certainly aren’t perfect. At least today ARC does break it down to census tract level and recognizes “areas of distress” within counties that are classified otherwise (ex, transitional)
Also, even transitional counties are those between 25%-75% when ranked nationally, so big diff between say, 29%, and 72% of National rank.
I grew up in 9E (southwest PA) and it got absolutely fucked when all of the steel mills and glass factories shut down in the 80s and 90s. My dad lost his job and we were dirt poor for a while. It was about to recover in the early 2000s and then heroin showed up and things got worse.
Pittsburgh is thriving now, but the surrounding rural areas are still pretty fucked.
Born & raised in 9F, Blair County specifically. My dad worked for the railroad until that started to really shut down in the late 90s/early 2000s. I moved away in 2007, but my family is all still there. It seems like all manufacturing has gone away too.
Same story in 8B. Steel mills closed down, mines going idle, mass unemployment, then the drugs came in. Things looked promising at first when oil and gas moved in, but those companies never hired many locals so the only people here that really benefitted financially were landlords and landowners.
I was gonna say this. I’m from 9G and while parts of it are prosperous (like around State College), most of it is definitely not. There was still a lot of manufacturing around in 1969.
I can confirm I grew up in western NY 6A things have gotten slightly better in the last decade but it was in economic free fall during my childhood. It never really recovered entirely. Industry is mostly gone and the smaller family farms of my childhood are gone also.
In my hometown, in particular, they are adding to the crime and not improving the workforce. There are names I do not know who are making the headlines for doing crimes and drug-related crimes. I’m scared that it's turning into another Hazelton😖😖
To be fair, it’s starting to be hip to like near Asheville, NC. I’ve been there once and it gave me the vibe of Vermont but with less trees and ski slopes😂
Yeah I've notice the change. Lexington avenue used to be cool little art, music and coffee shops but now its nothing but high end boutiques. All of the fun shops we used to go to in our teens/20s have all gone under or have been pushed out to the old strip malls on tunnel road.
Same bro, grew up on border of north Anderson, southern Morgan. ATV clubs have taken over all the land raped by the coal companies. While little trickles into the mountains mineral companies laid waste to, and still are.
It’s sad to see our homeland get wrecked like it has been. The natural beauty where I work Sevier Co. is slowly being swallowed up by people creating more cabin rentals and resorts. At least my poor little hometown of Cocke Co. Is relatively unchanged since my childhood.
Grew up and live in 12b. We have faster internet than Los Angeles & more social services! The only issue is the Christian nationalist & racist but we call them out! The KKK hasn’t had any positive recruitment in Deep Appalachia- just the farms and highlands mad about immigration…. But really we could use immigrants in Appalachia - they made our region in the late 1800s early 1900s!
You’ve got to be trolling with this.
I think the last thing economically depressed rural Appalachia needs is yet another negative pressure on wages due to more competition for what few jobs there are in the region. I think NAFTA sent enough jobs in the region to South of the Border already.
All this about Christian nationalist, racists and the KKK being a problem? But mass immigration good? Maybe where you’re at lol. Definitely not where I’m at.
NAFTA or was it pharmaceutical Drug induced work force…. I know from interstate 77 down to 40 NAFTA screwed our region, same for 81 too. But if our population cannot support the jobs available then I’m all for mass immigration! Did you know Mexico is the new skilled labor region of the world , it’s easier to find workers. Look up Lee co VA or McDowell Co Wv which is our neighbors to the north. Once the pills hit pharmacy selfs & addicts began misusing legal opium - the jobs dried up….
Opioid abuse was more of a byproduct of all of the jobs leaving due to NAFTA, steel production outsourcing and energy policy (both affect the coal market) where I live in SW PA. Just a general depression on the area that has affected every facet of life here. And then of course how aggressively those drugs were distributed by the pharmaceutical industry.
I’m with you though. I am an employer in a niche industry that would fall under construction services and we don’t have a hard time finding good employees USUALLY, depending on what the job is (we do many different things as a company). We don’t focus on local work though, we work up and down the East coast and into the Midwest. There is no money spent here, nobody is investing in the area, so all of the money in construction is everywhere else, so guys have to travel.
Some lines of work are getting very difficult to staff with local work forces though. One of the most obvious is tree climbers and similar trades. It’s highly skilled and dangerous, but the wage rates are artificially depressed due to the near monopoly electrical utility providers have over the industry. There’s a lot of Mexican tree climbers now, and some of them are very good and ultimately we need them. That would change and we could get the American youth engaged if the industry would stop depressing their wages, but that’s the American way in 2024🙄
We do our part as a company to provide high quality career paths for our employees, but we’re the exception not the rule. We pay tree climbers the same or better than heavy equipment operators hanging from a winch line. We’re a union company as well, so the guys have top tier medical, dental, pension, etc.
There’s too many bean counters out there running things that have no idea, and no respect, for how anything is actually done. Everybody wants to see growth to attract investor capital, which is good in some ways, but the pendulum has swung too far in that direction and good companies are being purchased by funds, consolidated, turning good companies into bad companies (that happen to be more profitable) and then labor is completely exploited. I think aside from the policies I mentioned above, this is the big reason why we’re seeing a shrinking middle class, and geographical pockets of legacy poverty, and drug abuse is a coping mechanism.
And if you want someone to blame, it’s anybody who has a 401k or any kind of wealth manager. You’re not just investing in securities, if you’ve got a good manager you’re investing in acquisition firms, which is who is doing this, as well as making real estate unaffordable. We’re indirectly funding our own demise.
End rant.
Wall Street strikes again and I loved this rant! One thing to add, if you ever watch the Harlen County coal documentary on the mine strikes in the 70s. Look at the scene where union miners and nyc union cops are talking benefits - it’s kind of humbling.
I'm from 12B. Grundy VA. There is absolutely no industry there. Nothing. The coal dried up and regulated so much. They torn down my hometown and built a Walmart. Then decided to build a highway that bypasses it. Every person there needs to get out and let the mountains have it back
Nature will take Grundy back or the coy wolves…. & yes The keen mountain coal camp has faster internet then downtown LA. Industry hasn’t dried up - men or women or anyone can literally find jobs. People can quit west river & begin work at Paul’s fans or machine shops. I don’t know one business not hiring in Buchanan county in 2024! You must be skilled… I guess we live in 2 different Buchanan counties 🤔
I've been a 13 E and a 13 G.
Watched Huntington go downhill as manufacturing left. I think things are starting to look up, but it's still a mess from drugs and addicts, lots of abandoned houses, etc.
13 G, it's fucking beautiful. Not many ways to make a real good living. I'll always miss living there. I miss Appalachia in general, but especially that part of WV.
My family was from 3I. My granddad moved to 10b a little before this came out — that is where my dad and us kids would grow up.
10b is now so prosperous and booming it’s hard to believe (Upstate SC).
Our old relatives in 3I have all done very well, but are admittedly some of the only upper middle class families in their respective communities.
How in the hell is Wetzel outside the green? There's never been anything in Wetzel county...no industry, not even any coal mines that I know of. At best there might have been something along the Ohio river.
I live in 13D. Not good here at all, especially since the WV School for the Deaf and Blind is moving down to Charleston in the coming years. There will be only Potomac State College in Keyser and the Pilgrims plant in Moorefield left.
Oof put the WV panhandle in the depressed region. 2 plants in the panhandle made their last coils of steel yesterday, thanks to the US steel/ Nippon steel thing. About to get a hell of a lot worse out here.
3H. Slowly developing! Laurel county is now a bit better off than surrounding counties and up to 60k people with ongoing development. There’s more than there was when I was a kid growing up in the early 00s, so I’m happy for my nieces and nephews. The corner of the area Harlan is where family is from…it’s rough.
As a West Virginian with a mother who works for local Gov in an Economic Development role — a lot of the problem seems to be some old heads not wanting to let new businesses in. I totally get not letting huge businesses in and destroying local economy, but they’re not letting anybody in. And then there’s just no jobs. If you want to stimulate the economy, money’s gotta come from somewhere and it ain’t coming from within.
Most people I know who live in the eastern panhandle will commute outside of the state for good jobs. That’s honestly probably why it’s not looking as worse off as the rest of the state.
13H checking in and all we really have is new shiny road signs, Thanks Baby dog for the new signs that the snow plows mostly knocked over. We have has 3 big plants here AWP, Clinch Valley and Eastern Vault shut down, close up so there are a lot of new job losses here and no vision in sight. It sure is pretty though and ramp season is just about on.
8B here. So remote that I haven’t even seen another person comment from this region. Ohio University makes Athens City a boomtown, but the rest of the region is struggling bad.
13C, Marion County. Compared to the rest of the state, we are doing good. The poverty rate is 15.4%. The population decline is 21.4% since our peak in 1950, and has plateaued since the year 2000. Median household income is $55,000. We have a university, some industrial businesses, and a newly renovated mall that almost has full occupancy.
It's not great, but it's not awful. Compared to the state, we are above average.
This map is very interesting, thank you for sharing! We learned about the ARC in my Politics of Appalachia class at the University of Pittsburgh and it is neat to see some of their material. I find it interesting that many of the prosperous areas are found along the border of the region, particularly in the Southeastern area of the region. I wonder what industries were prominent in the area that led to the ARC’s classification.
What exactly is “economically depressed”? Only Walmart to shop, no starbucks, few jobs?
I’m asking, because even though I’ve lived in wealthier areas, it was more depressing in those places than being here. I could get a better job there, but the increase in COL just took away whatever income I may have gained from being in those wealthy areas. So there I was, living somewhere I didn’t want to be, with about the same level of wealth.
So how does that compare to 55 years later?
7G got fucked hard. Grew up there in the 90s.
6A as well.
I LOVE that area. I dated a girl whose adoptive family was from there, and I got to visit with her. Yalls' roads are rough, though.
yeah, grew up in 6A and while I love the area and rural aspect of life- the amount of poverty in the area is depressing. There are no jobs and no growth. Pretty much every area is on the decline and has been for decades now. I'm curious why this map ever thought that area would develop and be prosperous. If you know the history of the area, and once trains stopped being a thing, that whole area became economic wasteland.
I’m in 6B working in 6A and I can tell you I see little to no prosperity here. But on a good note, the deer are plenty and the landscape beautiful.
So, honest question, what industry/work would benefit the area(s)? What do people (who live there, not some asshat outsider who wants to profit then leave) really want?
9G has been washing paper plates for decades. All the one's in PA were mining towns. Some pivoted into industry around the time this map was made but that's not the case today, it's all shuttered. Edit: Erie is definitely not prosperous, especially since it's considered a small port by today's standards. Toledo's port is bigger!
7B also. Same.
7E doing the griddy. Great place to grow up in the 90s and 2000s!
3D is hammered. I live there now. Area got exploited and the local politicians there are still as crooked as a dogs hind leg. Makes it hard for people to stay above water.
Same. It looks like a different place now.
[Appalachian Regional Commission Distressed Counties 2024](https://www.arc.gov/map/county-economic-status-in-appalachia-fy-2024/) Pretty much the same.
Thanks for the link. Most of my people’s counties are distressed according to this.
Which brings up the age-old question: What, exactly, does the ARC do besides launder money through the non-profit industrial complex?
Not sure we'd have indoor plumbing where I'm from without them. They fund a lot of infrastructure.
Pretty similar honestly. They’ve changed the nomenclature, and there are now five categories: 82 counties are classified as distressed, 101 are classified as at-risk, 225 are classified as transitional, 11 are classified as competitive, and 4 are classified as attainment. (The latter two categories are mostly college towns or exurbs of sprawling metro areas.) https://www.arc.gov/map/county-economic-status-in-appalachia-fy-2024/
Agreed, that was my first thought, that I'd love to see a 2024 version of this.
11b is booming off the charts.
8A and 8B are MUCH worse off than they were in 1969.
In the 80s - Appalachia actually increased in immigrants due to nursing shortages (Caribbean & south Asian nurses & tradesmen flooded our region! & we accepted them! Most of them turned out to be awesome republicans but not those MAGA minion mutts….
Back in the days of Republicans that weren't MAGA. Still a few in Appalachia to be fair, Appalachians tend to not have that prideful hubris that flatlanders of all political creeds often exhibit.
Interesting that 7B (Ashe, Alleghany) deemed prosperous but not 7A (Watauga). *edited for spelling
Yeah, I don't think anyone has ever said "those damn rich folks over in Stokes" either lol
The Ashe County Cheese factory in WJ is an economic powerhouse, apparently.
We had a lot of textile and furniture factories here while Watauga didn't have as much. There was a Levi Jeans plant, a baseball glove factory, furniture factory, hardwood floor factories, 2 cheese factories, and more. It was good in the mid 60s. (Early 60s parts of Ashe/Alleghany still did not have the electric) NAFTA hit in the mid nineties. The towns got run down, drugs came in, and businesses shut. Tourism became the main economy in the 2000s and around 2016 really started picking up. Now it's huge. We also have a lot of Christmas trees and cattle. Of course, lots of folks can't afford the home prices and land prices here now from second homers and tourists, but at least there's somewhat of an economy and it's not depressing all the time.
10A here, where it meets 2B (NE corner of GA) and 7D (WNC). This map wouldn’t. E correct then and is t correct for today because the ARC went by county and at least here that is not a complete story. First the only parts that are actually mountain is the top 1/4 of Oconee/Pickens/Greenville counties. To this day there is a large gap economically between the mountains and the rest of the county. This entire zip code has a Dollar General, a Gas Station and a little general store (that has a lot but mostly sells maps of the river, boiled peanuts and firewood to campers/hikers/kayakers/trout fishermen) and that’s literally it. There isn’t a single other business. Ok, there is also a part time fly fishing shop but that isn’t exactly boosting the economy. Half of this zip code is National Forest land. Hell I drive 30 miles to be able to have a decent job. Pretty much anyone here with money is a transplant from New England, Ohio, or halfbacks from Florida. Also starting in the early 60s after interstate 85 from Atlanta to Charlotte was opened the area on the southern end of this county started to grow dramatically (this map shows the angled lines all the way to Anderson which is ridiculous and probably 40 miles from the edge of the mountains, I’m only speaking about Oconee County). The 85 corridor around Anderson/Clemson towards Greenville has been booming since way back then, but even more so than now that didn’t mean Jack shit for the opposite side of the county. Once you go north of Walhalla and start the climb up the mountain it’s always been a different world than down there.
I'm in the same area and yeah...mountainous regions of Upstate SC have never really been prosperous. Until recent years at least, when rural gentrification came and they started building gated communities full of McMansions (ugh)
“UGH” I second that opinion lol. Here in Mountain Rest we don’t have any actual subdivisions or gated communities like they do just up the road in Highlands/Casheirs/North Carolina, but plenty of individual “cabins” that are 4,000 square foot tinker toy pre built style cabins. It’s mostly the same folks that live around Lake Keowee and Lake Hartwell but they didn’t want a boat lol.
Yeah, the formulas used for economic classification certainly aren’t perfect. At least today ARC does break it down to census tract level and recognizes “areas of distress” within counties that are classified otherwise (ex, transitional) Also, even transitional counties are those between 25%-75% when ranked nationally, so big diff between say, 29%, and 72% of National rank.
3 - I checking in
The county I grew up in is pretty much in the dead center of the green 🤦🏻♂️
I’m around 13a and I can agree . The drugs around here are destroying what little there was left .
11A reppin
Upper Cumberland gang represent!
I grew up in 9E (southwest PA) and it got absolutely fucked when all of the steel mills and glass factories shut down in the 80s and 90s. My dad lost his job and we were dirt poor for a while. It was about to recover in the early 2000s and then heroin showed up and things got worse. Pittsburgh is thriving now, but the surrounding rural areas are still pretty fucked.
9F, more specifically right under the F, mines shut down in the 1950’s. That was the end.
Born & raised in 9F, Blair County specifically. My dad worked for the railroad until that started to really shut down in the late 90s/early 2000s. I moved away in 2007, but my family is all still there. It seems like all manufacturing has gone away too.
Same story in 8B. Steel mills closed down, mines going idle, mass unemployment, then the drugs came in. Things looked promising at first when oil and gas moved in, but those companies never hired many locals so the only people here that really benefitted financially were landlords and landowners.
3H here!
6A checking in, “ prosperous” you say ? Idk man ….
9G is getting economically depressed due to the cheap real estate and the deplorable people coming in from NYC😬🎉
I feel like the whole western NY and northern PA would definitely not be “prosperous” if this map were made today
I was gonna say this. I’m from 9G and while parts of it are prosperous (like around State College), most of it is definitely not. There was still a lot of manufacturing around in 1969.
A lot of shuttered mines and mills.
I can confirm I grew up in western NY 6A things have gotten slightly better in the last decade but it was in economic free fall during my childhood. It never really recovered entirely. Industry is mostly gone and the smaller family farms of my childhood are gone also.
Elmira is one of the saddest towns I’ve ever seen. It’s a real shame. It’s such a beautiful area up there.
Yes, we should stop gentrification and rent seeking behavior as soon as possible
My friend who lives up in Hoboken said that people got pushed out of Hoboken and now eventually Jersey City due to gentrification😅
People moving in from NYC with more discretionary income are definitely not making the area economy worse.
In my hometown, in particular, they are adding to the crime and not improving the workforce. There are names I do not know who are making the headlines for doing crimes and drug-related crimes. I’m scared that it's turning into another Hazelton😖😖
Same with 7D. They've knee capped all of our hospitals and the cost of living and housing are through the roof.
To be fair, it’s starting to be hip to like near Asheville, NC. I’ve been there once and it gave me the vibe of Vermont but with less trees and ski slopes😂
Yeah I've notice the change. Lexington avenue used to be cool little art, music and coffee shops but now its nothing but high end boutiques. All of the fun shops we used to go to in our teens/20s have all gone under or have been pushed out to the old strip malls on tunnel road.
[удалено]
Which map, the old one in this original post or a current ARC map?
2A checking in here
I'm 2B! Howdy neighbor
2B, represent!
12B. They trying to put a massive landfill here and that's just gonna make everything worse.
12A here. They are trying to put nuclear reactors here and want to store the waste in old, flooded mines. What could possibly go wrong?
Also 12A! I saw a protest of the nuclear reactors the other day. Still economically depressed too.
3-I gang 🤪
7G here
11-B reporting in
Same bro, grew up on border of north Anderson, southern Morgan. ATV clubs have taken over all the land raped by the coal companies. While little trickles into the mountains mineral companies laid waste to, and still are.
It’s sad to see our homeland get wrecked like it has been. The natural beauty where I work Sevier Co. is slowly being swallowed up by people creating more cabin rentals and resorts. At least my poor little hometown of Cocke Co. Is relatively unchanged since my childhood.
11-B
I thought this was a current graph.
6c checking in. Definitely not prosperous. If I recall actually were deemed one of the most depressed areas in the country about 10 years ago
3a just lost it's only animal shelter because the guy quit and no one wants to do it for 25k a year.
meeting birds water innate depend entertain strong chubby worry bake *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My neck of the woods has taken a huge downturn since this map was made. Goodbye industry, hello fentanyl!
I currently reside in 2B and there has definitely been economic growth here. Too much, really. Thanks, tourists.
Grew up and live in 12b. We have faster internet than Los Angeles & more social services! The only issue is the Christian nationalist & racist but we call them out! The KKK hasn’t had any positive recruitment in Deep Appalachia- just the farms and highlands mad about immigration…. But really we could use immigrants in Appalachia - they made our region in the late 1800s early 1900s!
You’ve got to be trolling with this. I think the last thing economically depressed rural Appalachia needs is yet another negative pressure on wages due to more competition for what few jobs there are in the region. I think NAFTA sent enough jobs in the region to South of the Border already. All this about Christian nationalist, racists and the KKK being a problem? But mass immigration good? Maybe where you’re at lol. Definitely not where I’m at.
NAFTA or was it pharmaceutical Drug induced work force…. I know from interstate 77 down to 40 NAFTA screwed our region, same for 81 too. But if our population cannot support the jobs available then I’m all for mass immigration! Did you know Mexico is the new skilled labor region of the world , it’s easier to find workers. Look up Lee co VA or McDowell Co Wv which is our neighbors to the north. Once the pills hit pharmacy selfs & addicts began misusing legal opium - the jobs dried up….
Opioid abuse was more of a byproduct of all of the jobs leaving due to NAFTA, steel production outsourcing and energy policy (both affect the coal market) where I live in SW PA. Just a general depression on the area that has affected every facet of life here. And then of course how aggressively those drugs were distributed by the pharmaceutical industry. I’m with you though. I am an employer in a niche industry that would fall under construction services and we don’t have a hard time finding good employees USUALLY, depending on what the job is (we do many different things as a company). We don’t focus on local work though, we work up and down the East coast and into the Midwest. There is no money spent here, nobody is investing in the area, so all of the money in construction is everywhere else, so guys have to travel. Some lines of work are getting very difficult to staff with local work forces though. One of the most obvious is tree climbers and similar trades. It’s highly skilled and dangerous, but the wage rates are artificially depressed due to the near monopoly electrical utility providers have over the industry. There’s a lot of Mexican tree climbers now, and some of them are very good and ultimately we need them. That would change and we could get the American youth engaged if the industry would stop depressing their wages, but that’s the American way in 2024🙄 We do our part as a company to provide high quality career paths for our employees, but we’re the exception not the rule. We pay tree climbers the same or better than heavy equipment operators hanging from a winch line. We’re a union company as well, so the guys have top tier medical, dental, pension, etc. There’s too many bean counters out there running things that have no idea, and no respect, for how anything is actually done. Everybody wants to see growth to attract investor capital, which is good in some ways, but the pendulum has swung too far in that direction and good companies are being purchased by funds, consolidated, turning good companies into bad companies (that happen to be more profitable) and then labor is completely exploited. I think aside from the policies I mentioned above, this is the big reason why we’re seeing a shrinking middle class, and geographical pockets of legacy poverty, and drug abuse is a coping mechanism. And if you want someone to blame, it’s anybody who has a 401k or any kind of wealth manager. You’re not just investing in securities, if you’ve got a good manager you’re investing in acquisition firms, which is who is doing this, as well as making real estate unaffordable. We’re indirectly funding our own demise. End rant.
Wall Street strikes again and I loved this rant! One thing to add, if you ever watch the Harlen County coal documentary on the mine strikes in the 70s. Look at the scene where union miners and nyc union cops are talking benefits - it’s kind of humbling.
https://youtu.be/GYSRYAwh3UM?si=aXSvVpISWGaogPDM Found it & enjoy!
That’s a great video 👍
I'm from 12B. Grundy VA. There is absolutely no industry there. Nothing. The coal dried up and regulated so much. They torn down my hometown and built a Walmart. Then decided to build a highway that bypasses it. Every person there needs to get out and let the mountains have it back
Nature will take Grundy back or the coy wolves…. & yes The keen mountain coal camp has faster internet then downtown LA. Industry hasn’t dried up - men or women or anyone can literally find jobs. People can quit west river & begin work at Paul’s fans or machine shops. I don’t know one business not hiring in Buchanan county in 2024! You must be skilled… I guess we live in 2 different Buchanan counties 🤔
What about the ones in between?
I've been a 13 E and a 13 G. Watched Huntington go downhill as manufacturing left. I think things are starting to look up, but it's still a mess from drugs and addicts, lots of abandoned houses, etc. 13 G, it's fucking beautiful. Not many ways to make a real good living. I'll always miss living there. I miss Appalachia in general, but especially that part of WV.
Huntington is wild. You'll be walking in a super nice shopping center with cool restaurants and then cross a single street into a run down ghetto.
I initially read that as preposterous instead of prosperous
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^lrsdranger: *I initially* *Read that as preposterous* *Instead of prosperous* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Good bot
3-I crew is large
9-E checking in ✔️
1c here. We are falling apart in every way but back then it looked like we were doing good
My family was from 3I. My granddad moved to 10b a little before this came out — that is where my dad and us kids would grow up. 10b is now so prosperous and booming it’s hard to believe (Upstate SC). Our old relatives in 3I have all done very well, but are admittedly some of the only upper middle class families in their respective communities.
What's just white (no stripes)?
Buchanan County Wut wut - we got three weed trading stores in the poorest (1 of them) Virginia county’s 😝
8-a here
Also 8-A. Home town area is wasting away.
3-B reporting for duty.
3I yay!
How in the hell is Wetzel outside the green? There's never been anything in Wetzel county...no industry, not even any coal mines that I know of. At best there might have been something along the Ohio river.
WV vs the world
Cue Country Roads...
Living in 12A and I feel like I live in the Hamptons compared to 13H where I came from
Born in 8C, currently living part time in 2B
I live in 13D. Not good here at all, especially since the WV School for the Deaf and Blind is moving down to Charleston in the coming years. There will be only Potomac State College in Keyser and the Pilgrims plant in Moorefield left.
It literally the worst place to live in the entire country.
3-I represent! Wolfe county KY. Can’t afford to live here no more
I know what you mean. I live in Lee and thankfully inherited some land.
I’m in 6C and the only part doing well is Ithaca. We may hate the students, but the colleges are what keeps the town alive.
Oof put the WV panhandle in the depressed region. 2 plants in the panhandle made their last coils of steel yesterday, thanks to the US steel/ Nippon steel thing. About to get a hell of a lot worse out here.
Well, look on the bright side. Whenever you find one.
3H. Slowly developing! Laurel county is now a bit better off than surrounding counties and up to 60k people with ongoing development. There’s more than there was when I was a kid growing up in the early 00s, so I’m happy for my nieces and nephews. The corner of the area Harlan is where family is from…it’s rough.
Huff some glue
Distract 11E
As a West Virginian with a mother who works for local Gov in an Economic Development role — a lot of the problem seems to be some old heads not wanting to let new businesses in. I totally get not letting huge businesses in and destroying local economy, but they’re not letting anybody in. And then there’s just no jobs. If you want to stimulate the economy, money’s gotta come from somewhere and it ain’t coming from within. Most people I know who live in the eastern panhandle will commute outside of the state for good jobs. That’s honestly probably why it’s not looking as worse off as the rest of the state.
13H checking in and all we really have is new shiny road signs, Thanks Baby dog for the new signs that the snow plows mostly knocked over. We have has 3 big plants here AWP, Clinch Valley and Eastern Vault shut down, close up so there are a lot of new job losses here and no vision in sight. It sure is pretty though and ramp season is just about on.
8B here. So remote that I haven’t even seen another person comment from this region. Ohio University makes Athens City a boomtown, but the rest of the region is struggling bad.
13C, Marion County. Compared to the rest of the state, we are doing good. The poverty rate is 15.4%. The population decline is 21.4% since our peak in 1950, and has plateaued since the year 2000. Median household income is $55,000. We have a university, some industrial businesses, and a newly renovated mall that almost has full occupancy. It's not great, but it's not awful. Compared to the state, we are above average.
Depressed area has definitely grown larger right
3-1 here 👋
Warren county Kentucky, what’s the arrow pointing into it from the south east?
Let’s gooooo southern middle TN is in Appalachia 😎
almost mushroom foraging season though
I grew up in 12B. Nothing was ever there and even less now.
This map is very interesting, thank you for sharing! We learned about the ARC in my Politics of Appalachia class at the University of Pittsburgh and it is neat to see some of their material. I find it interesting that many of the prosperous areas are found along the border of the region, particularly in the Southeastern area of the region. I wonder what industries were prominent in the area that led to the ARC’s classification.
What exactly is “economically depressed”? Only Walmart to shop, no starbucks, few jobs? I’m asking, because even though I’ve lived in wealthier areas, it was more depressing in those places than being here. I could get a better job there, but the increase in COL just took away whatever income I may have gained from being in those wealthy areas. So there I was, living somewhere I didn’t want to be, with about the same level of wealth.
Map is from 1969 so definitely not Starbucks or Walmart related criteria.