Hickory council to hold workshop on racial, ethnic gaps 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.
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.
Hickory City Council Meets In Special & Regular Session Tuesday
Hickory City Council Meets In Special & Regular Session Tuesday
January 20, 2021
Hickory City Council met in special session Tuesday (January 19) prior to the regular meeting. Taylor Dellinger, the Senior Data Analyst with the Western Piedmont Council Of Governments, presented a study of equity, economic, and demographic data for the City of Hickory.
During the regular meeting, minutes, second readings, and the consent agenda were all approved. Forrest Jones from the Town of Garner and Past-President of North Carolina Streets APWA presented Bobby Hatley with the 2020 Streets Achievement Award from APWA-NC. In addition Tuesday night, Deputy City Manager Rodney Miller presented the city’s quarterly financial report.
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.