Economy of Youngstown, Ohio
The economy of Youngstown, Ohio, United States, flourished in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with steel production reaching all-time highs at that time.
Youngstown's economy has been impacted by a loss of the steel industry jobs which started on September 19, 1977, on what became known to locals as "Black Monday", and continued into the mid-1980s.
Founded by John Young in 1797 in the Connecticut Western Reserve section of the Northwest Territory, Youngstown spent the first half of the 19th century as a small village, dependent on mostly agricultural needs, until the beginning of the Second Industrial Revolution.
Endowed with large deposits of coal and iron as well as "old growth" hardwood forests needed to produce charcoal, the Youngstown area eventually developed a thriving steel industry.
[5] One year earlier, a group of city investors had taken steps to ensure high levels of local ownership in the area's industrial sector.
Led by local industrialists George D. Wick and James A. Campbell, they organized what became the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company,[5] among the nation's most important regional steel producers.
Historian William Lawson observed that the strike transformed industrial unions from "basically local and ineffective organizations into all-encompassing, nationwide collective bargaining representatives of American workers".
[12] This brought decisions to the local economy out of the hands of the Youngstown area for the first time, although Republic Steel had moved to nearby Cleveland years earlier.
[13] The merger and subsequent takeover of Youngstown Sheet and Tube burdened the community's primary steel producer with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
In 1979–1980, U.S. Steel pulled out of the Youngstown area and started scaling back its operations in Pittsburgh before eventually merging with Marathon Oil and filing with bankruptcy.
Shortly after the closure of most of Youngstown Sheet and Tube's area operations, local religious leaders, steelworkers, and activists such as Staughton Lynd participated in a grassroots effort to purchase and refurbish one of the company's abandoned plants in neighboring Campbell, Ohio.
Youngstown State University professors Terry Buss and F. Stevens Redburn have concluded that the mill closings resulted from forces beyond the control of the community.
[17][18] In the wake of the steel plant shutdowns, the community lost an estimated 40,000 manufacturing jobs, 400 satellite businesses, $414 million in personal income, and from 33 to 75 percent of the school tax revenues.
Fast food chain Arby's, which at the time was beginning to make a national push, moved its corporate headquarters out of the Youngstown area.
Although some other Rust Belt cities such as Pittsburgh have since successfully been able to diversify their economic base,[21] as of December 2010, more than a generation after deindustrialization, Youngstown has not recovered.
More recently, the city's downtown hosted the corporate headquarters of the now-defunct pharmacy chain store Phar-Mor, which was established by Youngstown native Mickey Monus.
In the late 1980s, the Avanti, an automobile with a fiberglass body originally designed by Studebaker to compete with the Corvette, was manufactured in an industrial complex on Youngstown's Albert Street.
[29] One of the nation's largest auto plants in terms of square feet, the Lordstown facility was home to production of the Chevrolet Impala, Vega, and Cavalier.
[29] Several times, General Motors has announced intentions to close Lordstown Assembly, especially after its 2009 bankruptcy, with the plant's final closure coming on March 6, 2019.
[34] In an effort to retain companies downtown, the incubator secured approval to demolish a row of vacant buildings nearby to clear space for expansion.
[37] Opened in 2012, the facility is 1 million square feet (93,000 m2) in area and produces tube goods to service natural gas exploration in the Marcellus Formation and has been an employer for 350 people.
The largest employer in the city is Youngstown State University (YSU), an urban public campus that serves about 15,000 students, located just north of downtown.
The collapse of the community's steel industry at the end of the decade created additional challenges for downtown business owners,[44] and throughout the 1980s and 1990s, efforts to revive the former retail hub were unsuccessful.
"[46]Major Vision Principles of Youngstown 2010 include:[47] Besides embracing downsizing and green space expansion, the plan focuses strongly on attracting more diverse businesses.
