What happened? The American South saw tremendous growth in manufacturing and industry during the first half of the 20th century, luring factories from the North with right-to-work laws that helped them sidestep labor unions. That same principle—lower labor costs—turned against the South when companies began to find even better deals overseas.
The North American Free Trade Agreement and a series of related pacts in the ’90s opened the floodgates for departing jobs. When China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, the pace quickened even more. In smaller cities and towns, where factories were the dominant employer, chronic hard times ensued, squeezing the middle class.

“In places that were really slammed hard by trade, like Galax and Lenoir, North Carolina, and Hickory and Bassett and Martinsville, it’s going to be decades before they recover,” Macy says. “These jobs went away through no fault of these workers, and we didn’t do much to help them.”

Then, the Great Recession made things much worse—and very quickly.

People saw their pensions dismantled and their 401(k) savings plunge with the stock market. The federal government intervened to bail out banks and passed a stimulus plan with the promise of shovel-ready jobs, but the middle class saw only ruined credit scores, outsized mortgages and skyrocketing levels of student debt.