MetLife's big move means 2,600 and some jobs moving to Charlotte and Cary. I wondered where they are coming from. Some of them are apparently coming from Lowell, Mass. So history repeats itself.
Lowell in the early years of our nation was a center of manufacturing innovation, and the textile industry flourished there throughout the 19th century. There were jobs in Lowell for hard-working immigrants flooding to our shores.
One of the people who was drawn to Lowell was my great-grandfather, Elias, who came to this country in the late 1800s, a young tailor.
He lived a few blocks from where the MetLife building now sits in Lowell. He made suspenders.
Things were tough in the early years. The Overseer of the Poor files in Lowell show that Elias applied for financial assistance. But he provided for his family the best he could, and his descendants did better and better, largely because of educational opportunities that Elias never had, and now are spread out from coast to coast and north to south.
Maybe some of the employees in Lowell will follow their jobs here. Maybe some of their great-grandparents worked in the mills of Lowell with Elias, and someday soon I will be sitting in a restaurant one booth over from a person whose ancestor worked on the factory floor next to Elias.
One of the economic truths that we have come to understand is that capital is mobile. Lowell lost its textile jobs when they came south in search of cheap labor, which North Carolina had as Tar Heels were leaving the farm.
In recent decades, many of the South's textile jobs left for lower-cost locations overseas, because there is always cheaper labor somewhere. Now, in an effort to consolidate and reduce its costs, MetLife is doing what the textile manufacturers did a century ago, and that's one big reason jobs are coming to Cary and Charlotte.
We also have a well-educated technology workforce here in the Triangle, which MetLife needs.
It is important in our celebration of the MetLife announcement to remember that we are all residents of Lowell, living in a global economy, and most companies are not sentimental about location. So we'll keep these new jobs in North Carolina so long as MetLife thinks it makes business sense. Companies that get the hang of moving in search of efficiencies don't forget how to do it.
