The bad news of 2009 began and ended in downtown Norfolk.
In the first week of January, Cox Auto Trader announced it would close its office on Plume Street, which had 170 workers.
Less than two weeks ago, Schooner Virginia was called back to its Norfolk homeport and its staff, including the crew and two captains, were laid off.
In between, the job cuts stretched farther and deeper, making it a bleak year for thousands of Hampton Roads residents.
So far in 2009, The Virginian-Pilot has reported announcements of more than 5,300 job losses in the region, to occur this year and next. The vast majority were layoffs. Some were transfers to other areas, which might inflict minimal financial pain on the worker but still hurt the local economy.
The number understates the total; some employers, including Bank of America and the HSBC credit-card company, refused to identify how many workers they were laying off locally. Circuit City, which closed five stores in the area, did not say how many people it employed in Hampton Roads.
Other companies did not publicize their job cuts at all.
The most seismic jolt to the local employment landscape is yet to come.
Throughout the year, International Paper announced a series of cutbacks - the shutdown of its lumber mill outside Franklin and its corrugated container plant in Chesapeake, and the contraction of the work force at its Newport News manufacturing plant - totaling 360 jobs.
In October, it revealed the biggest hit of all: the closing of its paper mill outside Franklin by spring. The mill has 1,100 workers. Isle of Wight County has estimated the shutdown will trigger an additional 2,400 job losses in the region, buffeting other businesses such as restaurants and trucking and logging companies.
Desmond Stills, a local spokesman for the paper company, said last week that the first wave of layoffs, based on seniority, will take effect on New Year's Eve. He declined to say how many people would lose their jobs that day.
The next round of job reductions has not been determined, Stills said, but will not occur before the end of February. He said he could not provide a date for the shutdown of the mill.
Smithfield Foods also will close a local plant early next year - the Smithfield Packing Co. South plant - though most of its employees will retain their jobs elsewhere.
Smithfield had said that of the plant's 1,375 workers, 745 will be transferred to the adjacent Smithfield Packing North Plant, 290 will be given transfers to North Carolina plants and 340 will be laid off. That means the area will lose 630, or nearly half, of the jobs at the plant.
Company officials last week did not respond to three phone messages and one e-mail asking for an update.
Other significant local job cuts include:
- CooperVision. The contact-len s manufacturer said in August that it would close its West Ghent plant in Norfolk, which employs 570 people, in December 2010. Last week, a spokeswoman for its parent, the Cooper Companies in Pleasanton, Calif., said the company would not disclose how many workers have already been laid off. The plant, she said, will close by the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2011, which concludes in January 2011.
- Verizon Wireless. The company said this month that it would close its call center off Witchduck Road in Virginia Beach in late 2010. The center has a staff numbering about 450.
- USAA. Unlike the other employers, the USAA insurance firm has completed the contraction of its office, off Northampton Boulevard in Norfolk. Of 861 people at the site, 286 transferred to other USAA offices and 150 no longer work for the company, leaving 425 employees locally, spokesman Paul Berry said.
Doug Huggins and Ruth Majette are among those who lost jobs this year. Though their status remains the same - unemployed - their outlooks and circumstances differ.
Huggins had worked as a corporate trainer at USAA for 15 years, teaching employees skills including customer service and marketing techniques.
He could have switched to a job at other USAA offices, but he didn't want to move - his wife has a good job and his son is at James Madison University - so he left the company in June. He declined to talk about his financial status, but Berry said USAA provided severance packages to all employees who chose not to move.
"There was a lot of surprise when they made the announcement," said Huggins, 50, of Virginia Beach. "But I truly believed and believe that it's the good Lord's will. I just have the sense that in the big scheme of things, it's time for something different."
He's applied for other corporate positions, but he's also considering starting his own training firm.
Majette said she was let go by a Norfolk hotel in July after about 20 years at the hotel and more than 40 years in housekeeping.
"That was my everything," said Majette, 68, who lives in Norfolk. "I liked serving people."
She said she did not receive severance or unused vacation pay and has had no luck finding a job.
"I've been trying," she said. "No one's hiring."
Majette has relied on her daughters for financial support.
"It's just frustrating to see you can be up one minute and down the next," her daughter Stephanie said.
Like Huggins and Majette, economists don't necessarily see eye to eye on the economic future, though the numbers show the region has borne less pain than most U.S. communities.
Hampton Roads' jobless rate for October stood at 6.5 percent, down from its peak of 7.3 percent in June. The national unemployment rate was 10 percent in November.
A Brookings Institution report released two weeks ago said Hampton Roads ranked among the 20 strongest areas in the country in terms of economic performance. The study also said job losses locally have been less severe than in many other metropolitan areas.
Virginia compiles a rolling 12-month tally of job losses by region. In 2008, the Virginia Employment Commission reported that Hampton Roads lost 6,800 jobs. In the latest time frame, from October 2008 to October 2009, that number dropped to 4,300 job cuts.
The region has done better economically than Richmond and Northern Virginia, said William Mezger, an economist with the Employment Commission, partly because of the stability of the military sector and the stimulus projects awarded to local defense contractors.
Even next year's cuts from the paper mill, Mezger said, will probably be offset by growth in shipbuilding and further stimulus infusions in defense.
"I'm inclined to think you will have better figures in 2010," he said. "It looks right now like Hampton Roads didn't go into recession as much as some other areas, and it looks like it'll be coming out of it ahead of some areas."
Peter Shaw is far less sanguine.
The business and economics professor at Tidewater Community College projected job growth in health care and stimulus benefits for construction companies. But "the caution I throw and the wild card in all of this" is the multibillion-dollar budget cut in state government.
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's budget proposal, released a week ago, calls for laying off 664 state employees and eliminating an additional 1,879 vacant positions.
The state cuts, Shaw said, also could trigger job losses in municipal offices that rely heavily on funding from Richmond.
His not-so-rosy forecast: "Look for a slow economic recovery with a very slow job growth in 2010."
Philip Walzer, (757) 222-3864, phil.walzer@pilotonline.com
