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Here is how the recovery is going in Wichita...

Raytheon: Local jobs migrating to Mexico

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/7212604.htm
About 350 Raytheon Aircraft Co. workers in Wichita learned Friday that their jobs are heading to Mexico.

The workers are employed in Raytheon's wire harness division at its plant in east Wichita.

The planemaker announced Friday that it is outsourcing the wiring work to Labinal Inc.' s division in Pryor, Okla. But most of the work will be done at Aerotec de Mexico, Labinal's subsidiary in Chihuahua, Mexico, Raytheon said.

Labinal is a multinational corporation that supplies wiring systems and engineering services to the aerospace industry. Its corporate offices are in Paris.

The wire harness division makes all the wiring systems that operate electrical components on Raytheon aircraft. The first job cuts will begin early next year and run through 2004.

After enduring months of uncertainty, the announcement was a bitter one for local Machinists union members and workers.

It is sad that companies are thinking of only one thing --"how cheap can they get their work done," said Machinists District 70 directing business representative Steve Rooney.

There is a little more in this link, but I will add my own comment: Companies always think of how cheap they can get work done. That will never change. And while it is happening, families lives are being altered forever.

This article deals with Raytheon only, but Cessna, a company that has always made its own parts inhouse is going to be employing the offload route, as well.

Aircraft manufacturing and its high paying jobs is what has made and defined this city. Changes are coming and I think what we will have is the equivelent of what Detroit and the steel mill towns went through several years ago.

Aircraft is a cyclical business and layoffs are common in the industry. And when the cycle turned, the jobs always came back. This time it will be different. Most of these jobs are gone for good.

And the affects?

Foreclosures take toll

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/business/7211303.htm

Wichita families are losing homes at a fast clip, thanks largely to a sour job market and vanishing unemployment benefits.

Home foreclosures in aviation-dependent Wichita have soared in the past two years as more families struggle to make ends meet in this hard-hit manufacturing community.

On average, 30 to 40 Wichita families each week are losing their homes at sheriff's auctions in the Sedgwick County Courthouse.

Extended unemployment benefits and family savings have run out for thousands of laid-off aircraft workers and others who still are having a hard time finding jobs two years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks triggered huge layoffs in Wichita's four aircraft manufacturing plants

The recession still has a grip on Wichita, where Boeing Wichita, Cessna Aircraft, Bombardier Aerospace and Raytheon Aircraft have aircraft plants. The companies have cut nearly 13,000 jobs since aircraft sales went soft in 2001.

More.......

And while we have all these foreclosures happening, the new-home building boom continues as it does in the rest of the country. It makes no sense to me.

And I see Wichita is not alone.

Bush Expresses Sympathy for N.C. Jobless

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/7201005.htm

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - President Bush expressed sympathy in North Carolina for companies battered by foreign competition, including the state's textile industry, but said the recovering economy and worker- retraining efforts should help the unemployed find jobs.

"People who have lost work should have hope," Bush said Friday in a meeting with students and teachers at a community college that emphasizes vocational retraining. "The economy's growing. New jobs are being created."

Bush brought no new proposals to a state that has lost a fifth of its manufacturing jobs in the past three years. But he said that his tax cuts, trade policies and various government worker-training proposals should lead the way to better days.

And we have this

Bombardier presses for subsidies

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/business/7211300.htm

Bombardier Inc. chief executive Paul Tellier has a message for Canada's next prime minister: Any cut in export subsidies may force the company to move its aircraft production -- and 16,500 jobs -- elsewhere.

"If that kind of support is not possible in this country, we'll draw some conclusions, like where we're going to make planes," Tellier said in a recent interview at the company's Montreal headquarters.

Bombardier, the world's third-biggest maker of commercial aircraft, depends on the government's Export Development Canada to finance about 35 percent of its jetliner sales because customers such as Northwest Airlines Corp. won't buy planes unless they can borrow the money. That amounted to as much as $3 billion of loans and guarantees last year.

more...

And this bit of Washington spin

'Jobless recovery is history'
Economists predict an improved economy after the Labor Department's monthly report shows continued job growth.
BY KEN MORITSUGU
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The U.S. economy added jobs for the third straight month in October as the unemployment rate dipped to 6 percent, the strongest evidence to date that the economic recovery is real and gaining strength.

"The jobless recovery is history," said John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia Securities in Charlotte, N.C.

more.....