For you free trade opponents:
When Jerry Wilmouth moved to Galesburg, Illinois, five years ago, everyone told him to get a job at Maytag Corp.'s refrigerator plant. Maytag paid the best, they said, and the 50-year-old factory was the lifeblood of the city.
Now, Wilmouth and 379 others are spending their first week of life after Maytag -- the first of 1,600 workers to be laid off between now and the end of 2004, when the plant closes for good and Maytag moves the work to Mexico....
Since the end of the 2001 U.S. recession, job losses have ballooned in many sectors despite economic growth. This "jobless recovery" has drained one in six factory jobs, squeezing many of the nation's more highly paid workers.
Manufacturing pays an average $45,580 in annual wages -- about 17 percent higher than the average U.S. job, according to the National Association of Manufacturers.
The layoffs have carved a swath of unemployment through the Midwest, where cornfields made way for factories after World War II as industry shifted from big cities to comparatively low-cost rural areas.Link
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