Business North Carolina articles from February 2005

Business North Carolina archives from February 2005

Looking back to see ahead.(UP FRONT)
February 1, 2005... Twenty years ago, BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA published its first Economic Almanac, an issue of the magazine devoted to examining changes that affected the state economy during the past year while trying to forecast those it would face in the...

Trend.(Illustration)
February 1, 2005... [GRAPHIC OMITTED] [GRAPHIC OMITTED] [GRAPHIC OMITTED] [GRAPHIC OMITTED] [GRAPHIC OMITTED] Latest Previous Previous % change month month year from last...

Look both ways: a famous forecaster and a top policy adviser discuss where the economy has been and where it's going.(ECONOMIC OUTLOOK)(James Smith)
February 1, 2005... James Smith is director of the Center for Business Forecasting at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at UNC Chapel Hill and chief economist for the national Society of Industrial and Office Realtors. He was a consultant to the...

Service station: as manufacturing continues to wane, the service sector has made a home for itself in the top tier of employers.(LARGEST EMPLOYERS)
February 1, 2005... It might seem a cinch to land a job in North Carolina. The unemployment rate was 4.8% in October, nearly a percentage point below the U.S. average and 1.6 lower than a year earlier. But while the state's unemployment rolls held 71,500 fewer...

Some small farmers will take their leave.(AGRICULTURE)
February 1, 2005... If you want to see a small tobacco farm, you'd better take a picture. After what happened in 2004, it might not be long before they exist only in photographs and memories. The $10.1 billion federal tobacco buyout, passed by Congress in...

Interest in new banks is running higher than usual.(BANKING)(Industry Overview)
February 1, 2005... After the sale of Hendersonville-based MountainBank in September 2003, its chief financial officer, Greg Gibson, lost his job--but not his ambition. Eight months later, Mountain 1st Bank & Trust opened in Hendersonville with Gibson as CEO. It...

Conditions put it together for builders.(CONSTRUCTION)
February 1, 2005... For two years, commercial builders leaned heavily on publicly funded projects to survive. But an improving economy stimulated a rebound in the private sector last year. "There's just not much bad news out there," says Tony Plath, a UNC...

Scant money and lost jobs do not compute.(ELECTRONICS)
February 1, 2005... Five years ago, North Carolina enjoyed a reputation for creating electronics and information-technology jobs. It had about 166,000 in 2001. But it has lost about 30,000 since. Nearly half the state's IT companies have closed their doors or...

Crisis has not passed for medical providers.(HEALTH CARE)
February 1, 2005... Bob Burgin, stepping down recently after nearly 24 years as CEO of Mission Hospitals and its forerunners in Asheville, sizes up the past year in health care in a word: tumultuous. It might sum up the coming one, too. Consider cost squeezes....

Practices make perfect targets for regulators.(INSURANCE)(Health maintenance organizations)
February 1, 2005... Things were going great in the insurance industry in 2004. Life and annuity companies were boasting about better bottom lines, thanks to strong annuity sales and rising interest rates that boosted investment income. Health insurers continued to...

Money proves to be real pill for industry.(LIFE SCIENCES)
February 1, 2005... Executives at life-sciences companies in North Carolina have at least one thing to be thankful for: Their industry's popularity with venture capitalists isn't fading as fast as it has for some others. Through three quarters of 2004, they had...

State can't manufacture the kinds of jobs it loses.(MANUFACTURING)
February 1, 2005... Here's the good news for the state's manufacturing sector: During the first nine months of 2004, it lost about 6,800 jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's compared with the 30,000 that disappeared during the same period...

Recovery lets shoppers lap up some luxury items.(RETAIL)
February 1, 2005... Shop until you drop. It's the American way, says James F. Smith, professor of finance at UNC Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School. "When income goes up, spending goes up." And income has been going up in North Carolina. Personal...

Carriers keep going by plying in traffic.(TRANSPORTATION)
February 1, 2005... Oops! They did it again. US Airways emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2003 but filed for it again in September 2004. The high price of fuel, increased competition from discount airlines and high labor costs were too much for the...

School rule will make late summer less of a bummer.(TRAVEL / TOURISM)
February 1, 2005... Anybody who says it's easy to be a kid these days isn't paying attention. Sure, kids a century ago were more likely to spend summers working on family farms tending crops and animals--often under a blazing sun. But kids in the 21st century have...

Utility players go back to what they're best at.(UTILITIES)(perfomance of energy industries)
February 1, 2005... The companies that own the two largest utilities in the state spent much of 2003 and 2004 peeling away superfluous layers, hoping to showcase the still-serviceable assets beneath and make money to pay down debt. They're likely to continue the...

Breaking it down: North Carolina's economy is made up of many parts. Here's a statistical summary of how they've fared.(BY THE NUMBERS)
February 1, 2005... Maybe all politics are local, but statistics exist at many levels. On the following pages, you'll see numbers that help explain North Carolina's economy at the state, county and municipal levels. You'll also see stats for the state's seven...