First Posted: 7/17/2013

LUMBERTON — The financial state of North Carolina’s most impoverished county is making headlines, and loss of industry, high unemployment and low wages are fingered as co-conspirators.

Robeson County’s median income fell more than 19 percent during the most recent decade, from $36,758 in 2000 to $29,667 in 2010, according to a study recently released by the Raleigh News and Observer. The decrease, which was the 24th largest in the state, places the county’s median income at fourth lowest in the state.

The median is the middle number in a series of numbers; it is commonly confused with average.

Greg Cummings, director of the Robeson County Economic Development Commission, said the county’s decrease in median income can be attributed to high unemployment in Robeson and surrounding areas.

“You can’t base it just on that county,” Cummings said. “People go to work in surrounding counties. We live off each other.”

One of those surrounding counties is Scotland County, whose 28 percent decrease during the last decade in median income was the largest in the state. Its median income fell from $40,775 in 2000 to $29,368 in 2010. The county’s unemployment rate was 16.2 percent in May, also the highest in the state, according to the North Carolina Department of Commerce.

Robeson County’s unemployment rate was 12.6 percent in May, the ninth highest in the state. The Census Bureau said the county had North Carolina’s highest poverty rate at 31.5 percent in 2010, the latest year for which data is available.

Jan Maynor, executive director of the Lumber River Council of Governments, said a line can be drawn between the decline in median income in Robeson County and the loss of manufacturing in the state.

“If you look at the income in 2000, we were beginning to see the loss of the manufacturing industry,” Maynor said. “We started becoming a service sector. Those jobs typically pay a lot less and don’t have any benefits.”

The local service industry has been a robust part of the local economy as hotel and restaurants are needed to accommodate motorists traveling Interstate 95, one of the busiest highways in the nation.

Maynor said the decrease in median income in Robeson County could help the county secure more grants, but could also become a “handicap” for already-poor residents who must rely on government assistance, such as food stamps.

The Department of Social Services paid $77 million in food stamps to Robeson County residents in 2012, the highest amount in the state and an increase of 85 percent since 2009.

Maynor said the county must prepare its workforce for “a different sector of employment” than service work.

“The future in service sector jobs is not going to cause income to rise,” she said.

Cummings said hardships that businesses face, including federal regulations, health care costs and foreign competition, affect the median income by making businesses more likely to close or relocate, thus raising the unemployment and poverty rates.

“Shutdowns affect the entire county, but there are reasons for it,” Cummings said. “The cost of doing business in America is higher than it was 20 years ago.”

Local residents blamed a lack of jobs for the decrease in income.

“It’s terrible. It’s the worst I’ve ever seen it,” said Fairmont resident Deborah Taylor, who looked through classified ads online at the Employment Security Commission in Lumberton on Friday. “You can’t find any jobs. There’s nothing to find. None of the stores have ‘Help Wanted’ signs in the windows.”

Delia Carmichael, a South Carolina native also waiting for help at the employment office, described the job situation as “bad” and said many jobs are “on a very temporary basis.”

Carmichael said more people need to be working for the economy to get better and incomes to rise.

“There has to be more jobs and more money for people to support themselves, and gas needs to go down,” she said.

The News and Observer’s study said North Carolina’s median income overall fell from $51,125 in 2000 to $45,570 in 2010, a decline of 10.9 percent. To see the study, go to www.newsoberver.com/ncincome.

According to the Census Bureau, the United States’ median household income was $52,762 in 2011, the latest year for which data was available.