A survey conducted by employment services ManpowerGroup and published on Forbes magazine’s website rates the Asheville metropolitan area the 13th worst in the country for finding a job, with a net employment outlook of 0 percent.
According to Forbes, the firm “surveyed more than 18,000 employers in 100 metropolitan areas to find out who’s hiring, who’s firing and who plans to maintain their current staff levels in the fourth quarter of 2011, October through December.” The Asheville metropolitan area consists of Buncombe, Henderson, Haywood and Madison counties.
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The “best” part is when you click through to the actual story: Forbes gives the AVL metro area a projected net growth of jobs to be …. 0%.
Yes zero percent.
Let’s see … the Mayor of Asheville (now driving a new Cadillac SUV) has been crowing about her alleged “job growth initiatives” as have the Buncombe County Commissioners; and do not forget the Governor as well as our representatives down in Raleigh and up in DC …
yet Forbes gives us a 0% chance for net growth (in jobs).
Out in Weaverville, arvato digital services continues to receive taxpayer funded “incentives” to “create” minimum wage paying jobs while simultaneously laying off long-term full-time well paid employees and replacing them with temporary workers.
Yet they are still referred to as “one of the largest” employers in the area … does that include the hundreds of staffing agency employees?
why would there be any job growth here with high taxes, high initial costs having to go thru the inspection dept, not to mention your treatment by the city folks who consider us their minions, high costs of utilities on and on. We have turned into a retirement community for the rich. The rich think we are such a bargain, they’re right, we are for those who have a lot of money. I personally think our city/county govs are out of control, money, money. money, so they can build more offices, buy brand new cars at every chance they get, hire family members to get large salaries and do nothing. How have we let this happen to us????????????????
LOKEL, I’m sorry I don’t have an answer to your question…just another question. Do you know which staffing agency Arvato hires through?
Makes me wonder what our leadership, Chamber, City & County Managers, & Advantage West have been doing.
Vote the pro-business party next time…..
Would you please explain how you reached the conclusion that Asheville is the “13th worst” city for employment? The Forbes website lists 33 of the total 100 locations surveyed. The article itself cites several locations with negative employment outlooks. The Manpower website doesn’t appear to give a list of the 100 locations, nor does the downloadable version of the US survey. Perhaps you made a logical error when you cited Asheville as the 13th worst?
I’m not sure but wouldn’t raising of min wage just raise prices? I for one cannot understand how anybody can afford to live in Asheville. This whole town has been consumed by greed. First and foremost by our city and county governments! Private enterprise is striving to make a profit just as individuals are striving to make a decent living. There is no reason for the average cost of a 1 bedroom apt should be 925.00. The problem starts with regulators being greedy, it used to be that you paid taxes and that took care of everything, then gov went to a consumer based fee for everything, my question has to be if that is the case, then that system should take care of those depts’ financing. But to add insult to injury now they just keep increasing taxes and valuations just by a stroke of a pen. Why would you raise valuation and tax burden on a widow with a fixed income and has lived there all her life?? She is definitely not trying to flip her house and make money, nor is she living in the lap of luxury, I’ll step out on a limb here and say all she wants is to live out her days in peace without the threat of the county selling her house on the courthouse steps. It’s a crying shame that things have gotten so out of control, The true Asheville as I have known to be for all my life is a more compassionate and forgiving place. There is no reason to raise taxes on anybody’s house if they have lived there for more than 15 years and is on a fixed income, you see taxes go up, utilities go up, groceries go up, basic needs go up, medicine goes up and so does everything else, BUT FIXED INCOMES DO NOT!!!!!!!! GREED-GREED-GREED