Surry Business

It’s a question of when – not if – the national economic slowdown will affect the job market in the Triad, the High Point Enterprise reported today.

“I expect we are going to feel it here,” Don Jud, professor emeritus of business administration at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, told the newspaper. “The pattern is that the Triad economy tracks the nation pretty closely. For example, building permits nationally are down 24 percent. Here, we are down 25 percent.”

Two major Triad em­ployers with ties to Surry County already announced job cut­backs this month. Ashe­boro-based Klaussner Home Furnishings will close furni­ture Plant 5 in two months, laying off 130 workers, and Hanesbrands Inc. intends to close textile plants in Da­vie and Randolph counties, eliminating 120 jobs.  Klaussner in September selected Salem Logistics, which has a 350,000-square-foot distribution hub in Pilot Mountain, as its exclusive contractor for transportation and logistics. Hanesbrands manufactures women’s hosiery at its Mount Airy plant, 645 W. Pine.

The slump in the national economy will catch up to the Triad “if there’s a general downturn in consumer spend­ing,” said Mike McCully, eco­nomics instructor at High Point University. One risk fac­tor for the Triad is that many key employers, such as Dell Inc. and furnishings compa­nies, depend on big-ticket pur­chases by consumers, he told the High Point Enterprise. “If the economy is not do­ing well, that’s often the stuff that people will cut back on,” McCully said.