Adobe Stock
The EDA Regional office of Atlanta awarded an Opportunity Zone grant to Walterboro on Apr. 2, 2020 with a total project amount of $19,590,000 from the US Economic Development Administration.
The U.S. Economic Development Administration offered the following description of this project: This EDA investment funds renovations of the city s wastewater treatment plant by supporting the expansion of infrastructure for an employer in Walterboro County, South Carolina, a designated Opportunity Zone. The expansion will provide long-term benefits to the local economy in the event of future disasters, providing the region with opportunities to diversify the economy through the attraction of foreign direct investments, and expanding the business of local industries. In addition, the project will create economic resiliency by strengthening the regional economy, supporting private investments, and creating jobs throughout the region.
Hickory is becoming much more racially and ethnically diverse, and clear disparities exist between different groups on a spectrum of educational, economic and other metrics.
Habitat for Humanity is building a new development in Ridgeview hickoryrecord.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from hickoryrecord.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
That conclusion is not immediately clear from looking at the data of the last 20 years.
Even as the population has increased from roughly 141,700 people in 2000 to nearly 160,000 now, the total workforce has fallen.
In 2000, there were nearly 101,900 people employed across all industries in the county, according to state data for the second quarter of that year.
The workforce has still not reached its turn-of-the-century peak. The closest it got was when the total number employed surpassed 89,000 in 2019 before falling to roughly 78,200 under the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic this year.
Taylor Dellinger, a data analyst at the Western Piedmont Council of Governments, said the drop is a testament to both the severity of the 2000s recessions in the area and the increasing age of the population.