Chickens, eggs and Labor Day

Unemployment remained high — and steady — in the Dan River Region in July even though it dropped in Virginia’s other nine metropolitan areas.

Same old, same old … right?

Not really. High unemployment in the Dan River Region is an old story, but with a new twist. The companies that were recruited here since 2004 announced their plans, built factories, installed equipment and hired workers — all before the recession hit.

For a community with high hopes for a brighter future, the timing could not have been worse. But it’s obvious that this community has the potential to grow faster than other parts of Virginia when the recession finally eases.

As hiring picks up — and that’s starting to happen around the country — the demand for the things that are made in Danville will translate into job growth here.

It’s worth remembering that just a decade ago, there were people in Danville who believed that this community did not have the ability to attract firms like Swedwood, Luna nanoWorks, Com40, Essel Propack, CBN Secure Technologies, Yorktowne Cabinetry and EIT South. Others thought that traditional industries like tobacco and textiles would always be as big as they had been.

Still others believed that this community was just fine the way it was — regardless of how many young people gave up on their hometown after high school.

Community leaders who thought more of this area fought back, and today we have a vastly different kind of economy that has the ability to blast out of this recession.

But the monthly unemployment numbers and the annual poverty stats don’t yet show that. How could they? In that sense, this Labor Day isn’t much better than a lot of previous Labor Days.

That’s certainly one way to look at it.

Another way to look at it is that this community has finally answered the chicken-and-egg question about jobs: Which is going to come first — good-paying local jobs or the qualified local workers to fill those jobs?

The answer is both.

New jobs are coming to the community while local people have been preparing themselves to fill those new jobs.

It hasn’t been an easy process by any stretch of the imagination, and a lot more work needs to be done. But this community has a lot to celebrate on Labor Day.