Ohio town struggles after package giant DHL leavesOhio, September 19: Unemployment in this small U.S. town has quadrupled in the past 16 months, but worse is to come as thousands of unemployed workers run out of severance money and benefits.
“Things are going to get tighter around here toward the end of the year,” said David Raizk, mayor of this town of 12,000 in southwestern Ohio. “As benefits run out we’re going to see a greater and greater dependence on the aid that’s available.”
In May 2008, before German shipping firm DHL Express, a unit of German post office operator Deutsche Post, said it was in talks to have rival UPS handle its U.S. operations, unemployment in Wilmington had long been below 3 percent.
But the local unemployment rate jumped over 14 percent in the wake of DHL’s announcement last November that it would leave the U.S. domestic market altogether with the loss of 9,500 jobs, many of them in Wilmington.
The national unemployment rate was 9.4 percent in July, while Ohio’s jobless rate was 11.2 percent.
Officials in Wilmington are struggling to help the unemployed cope while remaining hopeful that the town will find a way to replace the thousands of mostly unskilled jobs that have been lost, mostly as a result of DHL’s pullout.
“We have an opportunity to sell ourselves as a trained workforce,” said Katy Farber, president of the Chamber of Commerce in neighboring Highland County. “Out of the ashes of all of this, we could see meaningful change.”
DHL bought Airborne Express, the No. 3 U.S. express delivery firm, in 2003 and pledged to create jobs and growth as it aimed to battle dominant U.S. shippers UPS and FedEx Corp on their home turf.
“When DHL came here we felt like we had the world by the horns,” said Mark Daley, 50, a pilot furloughed in July by ABX Air, which handles some international flights for DHL. “We had a new owner with deep pockets who knew what they were doing.”
Now, Daley may lose his home.
“The irony is UPS and FedEx spent 25 years trying to destroy Airborne,” Daley said. “DHL spent billions of dollars trying to grow the business and destroyed it in five.”
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
A number of stores on Wilmington’s main street are now shuttered. The Sugar Tree Ministry, which provides free meals for the needy, used to feed perhaps 50 people a week but now the average is up to 250 a day, says Allen Willoughby, the Christian ministry’s director.
“We see new faces every day and about 90 percent of them from DHL,” he said. “The community has really rallied round.”
About 20 miles away in Hillsboro, Mark Crowe of investment firm Crowe Financial Group, said many former DHL workers have sought help after depleting their savings.
—Agencies