No End to Housing Bust in ‘Carpet Capital of the World’

How else can you look at it when you have recently shed more jobs than any other metropolitan area in America?

This stretch of carpet mills and floor covering outlets that hugs Interstate 75 between Atlanta and Chattanooga lost 4,600 jobs, or 6.9 percent, from June 2011 to June 2012, according to a new report from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Not that long ago, the mills that once produced nearly half the world’s carpets could not find enough workers. The road along the Interstate was jammed with out-of-towners who drove hundreds of miles to find bargains amid the rolls of remnants and stacks of samples.

More than a million new homes a year were being sold by the mid-2000s, and they all needed fresh carpet.

By 2008, the housing boom was over. The town’s unemployment rate, once about 4 percent, nearly doubled in a blink, and is now more than 12 percent.

The people of Dalton thought that was the worst of it. All the lemons had been delivered. But as many communities around the country found, what seemed like the bottom wasn’t.

Last week, the cavernous floor-covering emporiums along Dalton’s carpet row were empty. Carpet sellers who used to bring home $60,000 a year or more are making half that — if they have a job at all.

Jerry Stanley, the carpet king of Dalton who built up an outlet empire from almost nothing in the 1980s, says business this July and August has been worse than last December, when carpet sales are always at their lowest because hardly anyone buys floor covering around Christmas.

He had 31 employees in 2008, the last good year. Now he is down to 12, and it is hard to figure out what to say in the motivational sales meetings. “We’re all kind of battle worn,” he said. “The guys have their dippers down.”

He blames a lot of things, not the least of which are the government’s economic polices. But Home Depot and Lowe’s are not helping, and neither is a new generation of customers who want it cheap, easy and, if possible, over the Internet.

Technology has hurt employment in other ways. The big mills that operate here have streamlined production. More efficient carpet factories meant many of the entry-level jobs tying yarn or stringing machines have been eliminated. More experienced workers were laid off.

Things in Dalton are so desperate that — as bad as they know it sounds — some people feel a little hopeful when they hear news about wildfires or floods or tornadoes.

“You’ve got to have carpet and wood to rebuild,” said James Hall, 77, a one-time high school football star who along with his wife, Pat, 72, grew up in the area. “It’s terrible that tragedy helps us, but it does.”

Still, there are those who have turned their attention to making lemonade. Elyse Cochran, executive director of the Dalton-Whitfield County Joint Development Authority, is one.

Like a late-night gambler at a craps table, sure she can win it all back with one good roll, Ms. Cochran is as optimistic as they come. That 12.4 percent unemployment rate? It’s a ready-made work force.

“That’s our heritage, our history,” Ms. Cochran said. “We are a nonunion, hard-working manufacturing community.” That should be attractive to other kinds of industries.

And the next generation of workers in this city of more than 33,000 are going to be well-positioned for what she calls “the new global marketplace.” The children of the immigrants — some of whom were once bused in from Mexico to work in the mills — are growing up. Hispanics make up the largest population of students at Dalton High School. Add in the German immersion program and you have a diverse, bilingual pool of potential workers, Ms. Cochran said.

Still, the days when someone with no education could walk into a plant and get a job as a yarn creeler are gone. The companies need engineers and people with other technical skills, so they are starting the training early.

The economic development agency and Shaw Industries, the world’s largest carpet manufacturer, ran a carpet camp this summer for middle school students. Children toured carpet mills and even got to design a piece of carpet.

The hope is that they might grow up and enroll in a school like Georgia Northwestern Technical College, which just opened a campus here.

“Parents are sending their kids away saying, ‘Don’t go to work in the mills,’ ” said Barbara Ward, the former high school teacher who started the camp. “But it’s not their parents’ carpet mill of 30 years ago. It’s very high-tech.”

But everyone knows the golden age is over.

“The carpet capital is not going to be Dalton and the 100 miles around Dalton ever again,” Ms. Cochran said. On carpet row, salesmen talk a lot about the growing interest in laminate flooring. And then there is the new 184-acre industrial park. Granted, the only tenant is a small chemical adhesive company, but it is a start.

And surely Volkswagen, which has a new plant a half-hour up the road in Chattanooga, will need parts from smaller manufacturers that might want to call Dalton home.

Still, it is hard not to wonder what might become of Dalton, which started when the railroad arrived in 1847. Now, downtown holds not much more than three pawn shops, an espresso bar that plays Christian soft rock and the headquarters for the Carpet and Rug Institute, a trade group.

“All you need to do is get on the road to see what’s happening here,” said Mr. Hall, the former football star. “Everybody’s going in the opposite direction.”