The Ripple Effect

How a single layoff reverberates around one community's economy--and why the impact could last for years

By Massimo Calabresi/Roxboro Monday, Sept. 21, 2009
    • Bryan Regan / Wonderful Machine

    When Brian Whitfield, center, lost his job, it affected not just wife Debbie and son Logan but also some fellow citizens.

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    With folks forgoing vacations, Hyco Lake, 10 miles north of Roxboro, was a busier place this summer. It's a man-made lake that actually serves a business purpose. The south end of Hyco Lake feeds cooling water to a massive power plant owned by Progress Energy. The plant employs 268 people and generates up to 2,425 MW of electricity. In January, just after he was laid off, Whitfield called human resources at Progress to see about a job. The Roxboro power plant employs six supply-chain analysts, says Harry Sideris, the plant manager, but he doesn't need any more. Even if he did, Sideris says, Progress has a soft hiring freeze in effect and is filling only essential positions.

    Progress also has a plan to sell synthetic gypsum, a by-product of its newly installed pollution-reducing stack scrubbers, to a plant that was scheduled to be built this year by wallboard maker CertainTeed. Gypsum is a critical component of wallboard, which is a critical component of housing construction. You know where that story goes. Because construction has collapsed, CertainTeed has postponed the wallboard plant until 2011.

    That's too bad, because according to John Donaldson, president of CertainTeed Gypsum, the plant would have needed a supply-chain analyst. Someone like Brian Whitfield.

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