Blue-Collar America Braces for Recession

The pandemic is wiping out gains in manufacturing employment in politically important states

- By Cristina Lindblad

Located a little over two hours due east of Dallas, toward the border with Louisiana and a world away from the bustle of New York—or Wuhan—Lone Star is a pocket of rural Texas that’s so far managed mostly to avoid the Covid-19 outbreak. According to state data, just one case had been reported in all of Morris County as of April 7. The town, though, which has a population of about 1,700, isn’t doing as great a job of escaping the impact of a U.S. economy tumbling into what threatens to be the deepest recession in generations.

Faced with declining orders and no clear idea of when things might change, United States Steel Corp. informed state authorities on March 23 that it plans to shut down its mill in Lone Star in May, putting many, if not all, of the 600 employees out of work. The facility turns out steel pipe for an oil industry that’s retrenching in response to a sudden collapse in crude prices.

“Anytime something like this comes up— people down here rely so much on oil price and the market— everybody gets scared,” says Trey “Tiny” Green, the 6-foot-9-inch, 315-pound president of United Steelworkers Local 4134, which represents hourly employees at the plant. “We’re in the infancy of trying to console and talk to our members on what the future will bring.” If there is any consolation to be had, it may be that the steelworkers of Lone Star aren’t alone in the U.S. in 2020 in confronting a daunting downturn and uncertain future. Across the nation, what President Trump had been hyping as a “blue-collar boom” going into November’s election is quickly turning into a blue-collar bust.