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CNN Newsroom
Examining the Jobs Situation; Building Business Across America
Aired September 04, 2010 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, from the CNN headquarters in Atlanta, I'm Fredricka Whitfield.
Earl, once a powerful hurricane, is now a weakening tropical storm. Our Jacqui Jeras is still tracking it, however. So where is it now?
JACQUI JERAS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: It's moving so quickly, Fred, it's almost tough to keep track of it as a result. This thing moving at 40 miles per hour so it's really on the go, and it's a strong tropical storm. It's almost a hurricane, still 70-mile-per-hour winds maximum sustained, 74 is what you've got for a hurricane. This is still packing a punch.
Here you can see Nova Scotia, it made landfall 10:00 eastern time. And look at this, it's over the Gulf of St. Lawrence now and will continue packing those strong winds and bring heavy rainfall.
Here you can see the forecast track and what we're expecting, and it should become what we call an extra tropical system even later on today or tonight. So pretty much done with Earl for the United States.
But here's what concerns me for the rest of the weekend, is that there's still going to be large swells across the Atlantic seaboard here. And it's a beautiful day up and down now that the storm is gone, but rip currents are going to be a huge threat. So please stay out of the water, again, throughout the weekend.
We've got a couple other systems, possibly developing in the next couple of days. We'll tell you more coming up in the 3:00 eastern time hour.
WHITFIELD: Thanks, so much, Jacqui, appreciate that. We actually coordinate our ensemble together, but somehow we're like this.
(LAUGHTER)
OK. Jacqui appreciate it. Thank you.
Now a special CNN report on this holiday weekend honoring American workers, we focus on a big concern for many of you -- jobs. "Building up America" looks at what small businesses are doing to protect and create jobs nationwide.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A top worry for voters coast to coast, jobs, the issue that may decide the midterm elections. Jobs -- three of the best hopes for pulling the nation out of the recession, jobs, jobs, jobs. For months now, we've been driving the CNN Express all across the country telling stories of how people are building up America despite hard times.
So on this Labor Day weekend, we focus on what businesses are doing to protect and create jobs in many states. "Building up America" on the job.
In all of central Texas, there may be no one who knows more about rebuilding than the woman who runs this lumber company out on the edge of Austin, because for the past few years, that's all her life has been about.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hey there. What have you got for me?
FOREMAN: A dozen years back, Laura Cullen took over her dad's business. And even as a single mother she was making a go of it until New Year's Eve 2005.
FOREMAN (on camera): So then calamity strikes. What happened?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A massive fire, everything that Laura owns burnt to the ground.
FOREMAN (voice-over): $1 million worth of buildings, equipment, and inventory gone. Laura had no insurance, little savings, but she did have conviction. This would not defeat her.
FOREMAN (on camera): So Laura moved into a house on the edge of the property and day by day started to rebuild. Now, remember, while this was happening, the entire construction industry in this country took a nosedive. So she didn't have to just rebuild, she had to remake her entire business plan.
This is cotton insulation.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is made out of recycled blue jeans.
FOREMAN (voice-over): To cash in on construction trends she began stocking more green products -- recycled plastics, sustainable woods.
FOREMAN (on camera): By selling things like this, sustainable lumber.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's a demand.
FOREMAN: You have a niche in the market that really nobody was serving.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nobody.
FOREMAN (voice-over): She tapped into a government program that pays young people to learn trades augmenting her small staff.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You'll be working in the hardware store, you'll be learning retail sales.
FOREMAN (on camera): So you're also now renting out property.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
FOREMAN (voice-over): She cut down on the space she uses making some available to other struggling small businesses.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What I'm doing right now is virtually impossible, which is a one-man shop.
FOREMAN: And she joined a business group and meets every few weeks with a mentor, John Brown, who owns a much bigger construction company.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (on camera): So the basic idea is it's better for the whole business community if more established businesses help out those that are just coming along.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. You should always be willing to grow the next generation.
FOREMAN (voice-over): Laura knows the economy is bad, but she's not afraid.
FOREMAN (on camera): Do you think have you fully recovered at this point?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. No, but I am on the way up.
FOREMAN (voice-over): Because each time she winds down from another day of building up her corner of America, Laura knows she'll be right back at it tomorrow.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are going to survive.
FOREMAN: One of the worst problem that's can absolutely plague a community for years and years is chronic unemployment -- when a person can't get or hold a job, obviously they suffer, but they also depress wages for everyone else and they hurt the tax base, and it just goes on and on from there.
Sometimes the issue is that when they got out of school they never really made the transition to the workplace effectively. They lost the first job, and then they lost a second job, and then the third job, by the time they're in their 30s, maybe it's all over with. They can't really figure out how to get into the workforce.
That's why some people here in Austin have tried to take that problem head on.
FOREMAN, (voice-over): Out on the east edge of Austin.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here's eyewear for five people.
FOREMAN: Rebuilding America starts with rebuilding lives. Meet the latest class of the Skill Point Alliance Construction Gateway. Funded by city and county tax dollars, this is an innovative five-week training program to turn the unemployable into the employed.
FOREMAN (on camera): This is a big deal to you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, a very big deal. This is the beginning of the rest of my life.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm excited, even though it's really intense.
FOREMAN (voice-over): The target is individuals over the age of 18 who ought to be entering the workforce but who have little hope of doing so because they dropped out of school or wound up in jail or had some other problem. Sean Gomez, for example, had been in and out of prison for robbery by the time he was 25.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was no work. It was nonexistent to me, for people like myself.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we follow the basics and always do the basics right, everything else falls in place.
FOREMAN: But then he ran into Sylvester Valeria, who recruits students for the Construction Gateway program, scouring homeless shelters, unemployment lines.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I look for two things, a student I feel will benefit from this, and the second one, which is just as important, is an individual that is going to be a good employee.
FOREMAN: Once in, they're taught the boot camp basics of construction work, showing up on time, doing what you're told, the language of tools and rules of building, all with the goal of helping not just them but the broader community, too.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need new people coming in the pipeline, and one of the things that construction gateway does is that -- fills the pipeline with entry level construction workers.
FOREMAN (on camera): The people we need to economically and physically rebuild America.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely. Absolutely.
FOREMAN (voice-over): The result? Close to 90 percent of Construction Gateway graduates who had little hope of a job before entering the program are employed within days of graduation, and they stay that way.
FOREMAN (on camera): How confident are you that you'll get employment once you leave here?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm 100 percent.
FOREMAN: It certainly worked for Sean. He has been on the job for seven years and is now a foreman on an electrical crew.
The program takes only 100 students a year, but that's 100 doing good work. Good for them, and good for their communities, too.
So far we've been talking a lot about small business here, which is very, very important to the local economy. But there is a very rapidly growing big business here, too, that is making a lot of waves all around the world in tech.
People are paying attention to this company, not only because it's growing so fast, but because it has found such an innovative way to tap into an underutilized resource.
FOREMAN (voice-over): The morning commute for Julie Barrett is only as far as the kitchen, where she grabs coffee, puts out the cat, and starts reading what other people write on the Internet.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I feel I have the best of both worlds, that I contribute to the family income. And then I also get to participate in my children's life.
FOREMAN: It's real work with real pay for dozens of stay-at-home moms who have found new income, purpose, and satisfaction in a company called Bazaar Voice.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm a single mom with four kids. I wanted to be home. And I needed something that would allow me to contribute to my husband's income, especially in these economic times.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You use up all the time, you probably just don't realize it.
FOREMAN: So what exactly does Bazaar Voice do? Brett Hurt started the company and it rubs those consumer product review sections you see on company websites when you want to buy a TV, a camera, a car.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you've got to make sure that that conversation doesn't have anything racist or profane or some kind of religious statement.
FOREMAN: So you're not editing it for content. People can say whatever they want about the product as long as it's legal and --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right, right. Like any community, you want to have some standards.
FOREMAN: This is big business. In under five years Bazaar Voice has picked up almost 800 clients, suites of offices with gongs and game rooms, all in the middle of a global recession.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So in this office we have about 250. As I mentioned, we have quite a few that work at home. FOREMAN: Brett's simple philosophy -- care about the workers and they will care about the company. Need proof? The vacation policy is this -- take as much as you need.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And in four years, nine months of business, treating people with that amount of great respect, not a single person has abused it. Not once.
FOREMAN (on camera): So how many volumes of warranties have you read with user generated content?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is the first job I've ever worked at in 30 years of a career where I can plan my work schedule around my family rather than the other way around.
FOREMAN (voice-over): The result? Just listen.
FOREMAN (on camera): How many of you are optimistic of the future of your area right now?
CROWD: Woo!
FOREMAN (voice-over): In a moment, down to the gulf where shipping out is in for a small Alabama boat builder.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is where you drive the boat.
FOREMAN: When "building up America, on the Job" continues.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FOREMAN: That is the "USS Alabama," one of the great warships of World War II, and now a great tourist attraction here in Mobile. It's also a fitting symbol for a struggle that's going on all around the globe right now, being waged by Alabama, a fight to get international business.
Now, every state tries that, but they've really stepped up their efforts here, and if you want to see the results, you travel just a little bit further south.
It's about as far south as you can go in Alabama without getting your feet wet, but here in the Horizon shipbuilding yard, they have discovered the secret to building up is not stopping there, but going offshore to find new markets and new customers.
They build state of the art work-boats for pushing barges, servicing oil rigs, that sort of thing. And Horizon is relying much more on sales to places like Nigeria, Mexico, even Iraq. Travis Short helped start this business almost a dozen years ago.
FOREMAN (on camera): How important has international trade been to this company?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's been a very important for us, in particular, because of the downturn in the domestic markets.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The small boatyards are very competitive. A lot of small boatyards have closed down.
FOREMAN (voice-over): That's Ron Gunter, a vice president, and he says the days are simply gone for counting on the domestic marketplace as much as they used to, especially for $10 million marvels like these.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the best part here. Wait until you see this, tom.
FOREMAN (on camera): So this is the pilot house?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is where you drive the boat.
FOREMAN (voice-over): And he's not alone. State officials say Alabama firms have increased their exports by 36 percent in a half- dozen years.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You've got to do what you've got to do. Whether it's here, overseas or where it is, you've got to go out there and find it.
FOREMAN (on camera): They've certainly been affected by the recession. They've lost more than 100 jobs. But the point is, they still have more than 200 jobs, and they're still in business. And in this industry, that is saying something.
It is saying the global marketplace is here to stay. Do you think that any business out there can really afford to not be thinking globally at this point?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think not, particularly in our type of business, in the hard manufacturing business.
FOREMAN: Because business these days is hard and finding success can mean searching the seven seas.
FOREMAN: At places like Dreamland Barbecue, it's hard to imagine times are ever hard. Indeed, this is part of an aggressive building up program down by the river in Alabama's capital city, an effort to bring back the historic downtown and a lot of jobs, too.
And this, too, is getting financial fuel from deals with other foreign firms, specifically one that set up shop a few years ago and has been on-shoring jobs ever since.
Just south of Montgomery at the gleaming new Hyundai plant, almost every minute another new car rolls off the line. And just about as often, you can find someone like Yolanda Williams singing the company's praises.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I love it. I enjoy what I do every day.
FOREMAN (on camera): Did you ever have any idea you would be making a living from the car industry in southern Alabama?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, I never dreamed it. It's changed a lot of people's lives down here.
FOREMAN (voice-over): Winning this massive economic prize over other states that wanted it had local leaders scrambling at one point, making sure Hyundai knew how transportation services, power grids, and most of all, the local community could and would meet all their needs.
Last year, Hyundai was one of just three car companies to increase sales in America. The success for the community --
FOREMAN (on camera): so you're just looking to see if there's anything wrong with this piece?
FOREMAN (voice-over): Good jobs.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It means the world to me. And I know a lot of other people feel the same way.
FOREMAN (on camera): How secure do you feel in your job?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I feel really secure. I really do.
FOREMAN: Enough to buy a house, enough to move forward?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have.
FOREMAN: Hyundai doesn't make everything it needs, so that means that lots of suppliers have sprung up all throughout this region to make bumpers and sunroofs and dashboards, and that has created many more jobs.
FOREMAN (voice-over): In all, local officials estimate more than 20,000 jobs have rippled out from the Hyundai deal, building up south Alabama one job, one car, one minute at a time.
Coming up, following the yellow brick road to Kansas, where small businesses are rolling out jobs in a big way, and something new under the sun -- a solar surge in the wild west. "Building up America, on the Job" continues.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FOREMAN: Our Building up America tour took us to many far flung spots, including the great wide west, which has long symbolized hope for a better future, especially in places like the sunflower state of Kansas. This is a unique state in the country, unique because it is geographically in the center and because it has not been affected as much as others have by this economic downturn. Why is that? Well, they have some cornerstone industries, that's for sure. But they also have much of that pioneer spirit that started this whole place, the spirit they're counting on right now.
Out at the tourist attraction called Old Cow Town amid the cannon and guns, Kansans are reenacting the past. But their present struggle is for the future.
FOREMAN (on camera): Do you see a lot of people worrying about the economy right now?
GREGORY HUNT, OLD COW TOWN MUSEUM: Yes. My friends, some of them don't know where the next check is coming from.
RACHEL HUNT, OLD COW TOWN MUSEUM: I'm in the automotive industry and we've seen a big downturn and everybody's worried about it
FOREMAN (voice-over): Worried but like the famous Kansan Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz," not sitting still. Smack in the middle of the country, Kansas has historically rolled out wheat, cattle, transportation, and aviation products worth billions.
NOAH WRIGHT, OZ WINERY: The yellow brick road, it's a blend of chardonnay.
FOREMAN: So to build up, many have turned to past success for inspiration and a competitive edge. That's what Noah Wright did.
WRIGHT: Kansas, before prohibition, was the third largest grape producing state in the nation.
FOREMAN (on camera): Three years ago he had an idea to combine the state's little known wine making past with its fame as Dorothy's home, and Oz Winery has been booming ever since, despite the recession.
WRIGHT: Since we've opened we've grown every year and we don't know if we'd be ten times more than that or if we'd just be at the same level, you know? We just don't know if it's affecting us yet. We have no way to tell.
FOREMAN: Such efforts by thousands of small businesses have helped produce an unemployment rate well below the national average, a housing market on the rebound, and a population, if not entirely upbeat, at least hopeful.
That classic American tune, "Home on the Range" was written in Kansas almost 140 years ago. And since that time it's become a lot more than just the state song. For many people here, it is a measure of commitment, their commitment to always build up whenever times turn down.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The people here still have the same mentality. Whatever happens to us, we're going to manage. We're going to make do.
FOREMAN: This is one of a handful of states with no large cities, just a lot of medium-size places and plenty of small towns. And, yet, Kansans have made their mark in the ages, in good times and bad.
FOREMAN (on camera): One of the industries that Kansas is known all around the world for is airplane manufacturing, particularly corporate jets and smaller privately-owned planes. Some of the biggest names in that business are right here in Wichita, and they've been through a very tough time. They've lost a lot of business and a lot of jobs.
But they've also used this as a time to regroup and prepare themselves to build up again.
FOREMAN (voice-over): A few years back, Cessna, one of the most renowned names in aviation, was selling hundreds of multimillion dollar airplanes annually. Then the recession, scandals over the misuse of corporate jets, and the company lost half of its orders and half of its jobs -- 6,000 in Wichita alone, for CEO Jack Pelten, a wake-up call.
FOREMAN (on camera): How is this company fundamentally different than it was two years ago?
JACK PELTEN, CEO CESSNA: I think now every day we wake up, we feel we have to go out and earn our right to be that number one manufacturer in the general aviation space. It's not just a given. It's something that you have to prove every day.
FOREMAN (voice-over): Proving it has meant using the downtime to reconsider many manufacturing methods. For example, they found that by raising jet wings to a vertical position, technicians can move up, down, and across them quicker, saving time and labor that was previously lost maneuvering above and below the wing.
By acquiring and attaching the most expensive parts like engines last, they reduce the holding time for costly inventory. They've stepped up customer service with rapid response teams on the ground, and if need be, in the air, to fix any plane that needs repair.
And throughout the chain of production, they say they are looking for new ideas, new savings, new efficiencies.
FOREMAN (on camera): In many ways it sounds like you completely rebuilt your production line.
PELTEN: We did. We cleared out this entire part of the building, and said, let's go reexamine how we build airplanes and how we can become better at it. And not only does it affect the cost and quality, which our customers are going to view positively, but it's also to help our employees.
FOREMAN (voice-over): All of that has allowed the company to maintain aggressive research and development, to roll out its latest model, despite the hard times.
FOREMAN (on camera): Do you really believe that if you don't keep developing and bringing new products on, you're never going to recover?
PELTEN: You're not. Innovate or die. You can't just hunker down and hide during this period of time. You have to continue to invest.
FOREMAN (voice-over): Because that, he believes, is what protects jobs on the ground and puts planes into the sky.
FOREMAN: Coming up, the secret of their success -- how two men in very different fields are proving that building up is still possible, even in industries that some might want to write off.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: Hello, I'm Fredricka Whitfield in Atlanta. A look at our top stories right now.
What's left of hurricane Earl is losing strength as it moves through Canada. It now is just a tropical storm dumping rain on Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. It grazed the northeastern United States overnight causing a few power outages in Massachusetts.
And a state of emergency is in effect in Christchurch, New Zealand, more than 24 hours after a major earthquake there. There are no reports of death so far, but the damage is substantial. The 7.0 magnitude quake caused buildings and roads to crumble. An overnight curfew is in effect and New Zealand's army has been called in to help police prevent looting.
And thousands of human rights demonstrators marched in Paris today, many held signs attacking President Nicolas Sarkozy. The protest was partly sparked by government raids targeting the Roma population, commonly known as gypsies. Thousands have been returned to Romania and Bulgaria since the crackdown began.
Demonstrators are also concerned about proposals to strip the citizenship of naturalized immigrants found guilty of certain crimes.
I'm Fredricka Whitfield in the CNN center in Atlanta. Now back to "Building up America" and a look at what small businesses are doing to protect job and create jobs across the country.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sometimes building up comes down to a simple equation -- a few people with a good idea who are willing to work for it despite everyone else saying it can't work.
For example, manufacturing has largely been written off in many areas as a dead industry. But don't say that to the couple we found in one small Kansas town. In a shower of sparks and hot metal, Terry and Debbie Shrag are building success at Cannonball. Ten years ago they opened shop to make one of Terry's inventions, a fully automated hay loader and they are turning them out as fast as they can.
FOREMAN (on camera): Why do you think your business is doing well when so many others aren't?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I think number one is we have an excellent product. And we have personal contact with almost everybody we sell to.
FOREMAN (voice-over): But there's more. They Shrag's could not get a loan when they started, so they paid for everything. That kept them from getting too big too fast, or sinking money into buildings or help, and it prepared them for hard times.
FOREMAN (on camera): So you didn't have the loan money to work with, but you also didn't have the debt to be saddled with?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's correct. With us, since we've always worked out of our pocket and always made our cash flow work, I think we weren't hit with that when the banks started tightening up on their money.
FOREMAN: At Wichita State, the Small Business Development Center says such home grown success stories are critical to this state's rebound, because, David May says, only a tiny fraction of new jobs come from out of state companies moving in.
FOREMAN (on camera): So what makes the difference between a small business that succeeds and one that does not?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think the biggest thing is probably customer focus. And it really starts with, I think, identifying a real need that exists and going after it and meeting that need and really taking an outside-in approach to the market.
FOREMAN: He should know. Back in the late '50s, two of the school's graduates borrowed $600 to start Pizza Hut and 20 years later sold it for $300 million. Cannonball is not that big, but it provides 18 full-time jobs with $3 million in annual sales. And --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: L If I were 20 years younger I could double the size of it.
FOREMAN (on camera): It could be that big, you have that much business?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, yes. I could double it.
FOREMAN: For a farm equipment maker in the middle of a recession, not a bad harvest.
FOREMAN (voice-over): Just like manufacturing, the newspaper business is in dire straits, but not in one rural community. A bit more than a year ago, Andy Springlemeyer (ph) had every reason to give up on the economy, the west, and especially newspapers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We just walked around the whole day with tears in our eyes.
FOREMAN: After ten years of reporting for Denver's "Rocky Mountain News," he and his colleagues were shocked to find it shutting down.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That was a special place and it was a damn good newspaper.
FOREMAN: But rather than retreat, he charged straight down to his home state of New Mexico, an unusual choice, perhaps, as a place to rebuild a career. The economy here has been struggling with steep job losses in mining, manufacturing, construction.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was dead, nothing really going on.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I would say it's very hard.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can find one but it's going to be tough.
FOREMAN: But in the little town of Santa Rosa, Springlemeyer found a newspaper for sale, and with every last dollar he had, he bought it.
FOREMAN (on camera): Was this a wise decision?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was the best thing I ever did, best thing I ever did.
FOREMAN (voice-over): He says that because no matter what he is covering each day, he and his small staff are making a go of it. While other papers are dramatically cutting their costs, Springlemeyer (ph) increased his staff payroll by 40 percent, adding more pages, more photos, more stories.
He killed the paper's website, arguing that it hurt street sales. And through all of that he rebuilt the paper's relationship with its readers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The community hangs on every story. The community hangs on every cartoon.
(LAUGHTER)
FOREMAN: So now when he lampoons a local tourist attraction, a famous diving hole, even business folks who rely on it for a living seem to enjoy the joke.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You like the cartoon?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I like it. I'm going to keep all of these.
FOREMAN: It's tough work. One night a week he drives 100 miles each way to pick up his papers from a printer, and many more nights he and his staff work far into the darkness, all to keep expenses down and quality up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Those things the readers don't photos, but what they sure as heck notice is that a lot of these big city newspapers are getting thinner and thinner and thinner.
FOREMAN: While his paper is getting thicker. And the result? Subscriptions, street sales, and advertising are all up, up, up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a big lesson that you can apply to any paper in the country. It's working here because I'm spending more, not less.
FOREMAN: And because while other papers are folding all over, here everyone knows every morning, Andy Springlemeyer (ph) and his team will be back on the beat.
FOREMAN: We are rolling on, deeper into New Mexico, where the sun shines brightly and the stars do, too. How this beautiful western state is going Hollywood and creating hundreds of jobs in the process. "Building up America, on the Job."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FOREMAN (on camera): Moviemaking has always been about big dreams, but some years back, officials here had their own dream about what the movie business could mean to this state. And the result -- lights, cameras, and a lot of action.
FOREMAN (voice-over): What do "Transformers," "Indiana Jones," and "No Country for Old Men" have in common? They were all made in New Mexico.
FOREMAN (on camera): The film industry is just going gangbusters.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It really is.
FOREMAN: And in the capital, the governor's man in charge of film, Eric Witt is delighted.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's helped a lot of people in our local economy, not just film buff the related industries.
FOREMAN: And what is this place right here?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is one of the more famous bars here in Santa Fe, it's been here about 40 years. In this bar, they shot "Crazy Heart."
FOREMAN (voice-over): New Mexico has built this love affair with film through an aggressive campaign that started seven years ago. That's when the state began offering big rebates to filmmakers who would come and hire local workers, buy local products, and use local facilities, like the sprawling new sound stages just outside of Albuquerque.
In addition, the state can help cover salaries for local folks being trained for film jobs. As a result, the number of skilled film workers here has gone from 100 to 3,000.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And it's very high-paying jobs, great benefits.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As construction has really slowed down, this has really been a good, good way to fill that economic void for jobs.
FOREMAN (voice-over): This is not an utterly new idea. Thomas Edison's picture company made his first film here more than a century ago, and in the 20s and 30s cowboy films rode all over the New Mexico range.
But what is happening now is much bigger than what was happening back then, even bigger than what was happening 13 years ago when they had five film and video projects in this state. Last year, they had more than 40, and the number keeps growing.
The state estimates 10,000 jobs have been created on the sets and by the dozens of local businesses providing everything from catering, to computer animation, to big spending filmmakers.
FOREMAN (on camera): Do you have any idea how much they're spending each year here?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're spending about $300 million a year here right now in hard cash, generating about $1 billion a year in economic activity as the money circulates through the local economy.
FOREMAN (voice-over): And that ride, by almost all accounts, is just beginning.
FOREMAN (on camera): This state, for the relatively small population, has long struggled to draw big industries. But the national movement toward green technology also has the economy looking up.
FOREMAN (voice-over): With easily more than 300 days of sunshine each year, New Mexico is one of the sunniest states in the country, and there's a wave of solar energy companies coming to set up shop. One of the biggest, Schott Solar.
And ever since this German-owned company opened this massive complex on the south side of Albuquerque, they have been energizing the local jobs market. Amid the whir of robots in this 175,000- square-foot plant, workers are turning out solar cells and related technology as fast as they can. And their products are going out the door just as quickly.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a growing technology and there's a demand for it. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We basically sell everything that we produce.
FOREMAN (on camera): You feel good about it?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I do.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Personally, I see a future here.
FOREMAN (voice-over): It's no accident -- up in the capital, Santa Fe, another fellow believes he can see the future, too.
GOV. BILL RICHARDSON, (D) NEW MEXICO: Am I always right or what?
CROWD: Yes!
FOREMAN: Governor Bill Richardson is pushing his state hard to recruit more and more solar companies.
RICHARDSON: I've just concentrated like a laser on saying any solar entity, please come to New Mexico. We will do everything we can to recruit you. And it's working.
FOREMAN: The governor's philosophy is simple. His state has long been home to some of the federal government's most advanced scientific and military labs. A great deal of technical expertise is already here. Combine that with new companies on the leading edge of a green revolution, and the result -- 2,500 new jobs already this year, as more companies follow Schott Solar's lead.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Governor Richardson and his cabinet rolled out the welcome mat in a lot of ways. They provided all manner of incentives for us, tax incentives on the property, training incentives.
FOREMAN (on camera): What is your best hope for all of this? What do you hope people say 20 years from now about this idea?
RICHARDSON: That New Mexico, despite its small size, became the solar capital of America. That's my goal. And I think we're on our way.
FOREMAN (voice-over): Solar is still a tiny sliver of the U.S. energy market, but this state is intent on grabbing a big share of that, convinced it will mean a lot of jobs, money, and bright days ahead.
Just ahead for us, buildings, brad --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And there is no reason to build any other way now.
FOREMAN: -- and blues.
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(COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FOREMAN (on camera): No one has suffered more in this country lately than folks in the Gulf coast. Nobody here denies that there's been a lot of bad news here, a lot of setbacks, and an awful lot of losses. But equally undeniable is the fact that many people here are working every day to build up again.
Any time, any day, you can hear blues in the delta. This is the land of legends, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and it's home to their musical heirs, like Terry "Big T" Williams.
TERRY "BIG T" WILLIAMS, BLUES MUSICIAN: I don't care if it's a fast played blues or slow-played blues, it's still saying something about, I'm feeling bad, but still life is OK.
(LAUGHTER)
FOREMAN (on camera): And lately, life has been more than OK here, even in the wake of the oil spill, Katrina, and all the economic turmoil, because of a rising tide of blues tourism. At the Delta Blues Museum, the crowds are growing so steadily with people from every state and dozens of foreign countries, it will soon be expanded to more than twice its size.
This town alone pulled in $54 million from visitors last year, people tracing the history of blues and rock through a string of historic sites throughout the region called the Blues Trail. Kappi Allen is with the county tourism commission.
KAPPI ALLEN, DIRECTOR OF TOURISM: This year so far we've seen an increase of 13 percent in our tourism tax numbers.
FOREMAN (on camera): And all of that in the middle of a recession?
ALLEN: Absolutely. We are open for business.
FOREMAN (voice-over): Some say the surge is because the blues speak to folks in hard times. Some say it's because people here are doing a better job marketing their attractions.
But Bill Luckett, an owner of the Ground Zero Blues Club, says whatever the cause, the results are undeniable.
FOREMAN (on camera): How important do you think that is to building up this part of America in these hard times?
BILL LUCKETT, GROUND ZERO BLUES CLUB: Well, we have lost a lot of our factories, a lot of our base manufacturing wise. Blues music and tourism and interest in blues music is replacing that as an industry.
FOREMAN: According to lore, the great blues man Robert Johnson met the devil at the crossroads and traded his soul for the gift of music. That's just a legend. But this is a fact. LUCKETT: The tourist attraction used to be seasonal. Now it's year-round. They come all the time now.
FOREMAN (voice-over): And in the wake of so many problems for many folks, that feels heaven-sent.
Next, building up the big easy way.
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FOREMAN: We started our "Building up America" journey in New Orleans and ended our summer there, too, with good reason. This city and the wider gulf coast were pounded by hurricane Katrina five years ago, then by the recession, then by the oil spill, and yet folks here still keep finding ways to build up.
From the nonprofit construction company called build now, which is restoring working class neighborhoods --
FOREMAN (on camera): In every way, these really are working class family homes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely. Absolutely.
FOREMAN (voice-over): -- to the dedicated Army Corps of Engineers erecting a new massive flood protection system all around the old historic town.
FOREMAN (on camera): The walls you're building are fundamentally much, much stronger.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, no doubt about it, in every way they're much stronger and more robust.
FOREMAN (voice-over): From the unheralded teams at the superdome who brought the wonder of the world back to life to the efforts of a superstar, Brad Pitt, to bring affordable green housing to one of the hardest-hit parts of the Ninth Ward.
PITT: Every house you see here, last month, everyone but one was producing more energy than it was consuming.
FOREMAN: For all of them, building up comes down to the simple philosophy of a Gulf coast mayor.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Never, did it ever cross my mind that we're finished, you know, that it's done.
FOREMAN: And that's what we found keeps building up jobs, building up communities, building up America, despite all the hard times.
For all of us on the CNN Express, I'm Tom Foreman. We'll see you down the road. (END VIDEOTAPE)
