Lenoir is a city of 18,000 in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Hard-hit by outsourcing of furniture jobs and the recession, the city's downtown sees little traffic. Frank Langfitt/NPR hide caption
Shifting Jobs, Adapting Workers Some of the thousands of manufacturing jobs that were lost in Lenoir and other North Carolina towns went to Dalingshan, a South China industrial city with factories as far as the eye can see. Here, the story of some of the American and Chinese workers.
Special Series
Shifting Jobs, Adapting Workers
By early 2008, Chen Hong had more than doubled his salary at this factory, which makes furniture for export to the U.S. Surrounding Guangdong province was suffering from a labor shortage so migrants like Chen could pick and choose where they worked. Frank Langfitt/NPR hide caption