Shaw Industries will open a new $85 million carpet plant that would employ 500 people in recession-battered northwest Georgia, which has struggled with double-digit unemployment rates since the collapse of the housing industry.
Gov. Nathan Deal said Thursday the move by Shaw to build a plant in Adairsville is a sign of “the steady comeback of the floor covering industry in north Georgia.”
The deal, first reported by the AJC, is the latest in a flurry of flooring announcements for the hard-hit corridor. Engineered Floors, a carpet upstart founded by former Shaw chief Bob Shaw, said in May it would invest $450 million in two new carpet plants that would employ 2,400 people.
The Dalton region gained the distinction of being the metro area that shed the most jobs of any in the nation from June 2011 to June 2012, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The region had lost more than 13,000 jobs from its July 2006 peak, according to federal statistics, and the metro area’s unemployment rate was 10.3 percent in March, about two points higher than the state average.
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