The area had almost 150,000 manufacturing jobs, which represented almost one-fourth of the area’s employment; by contrast, jobs in professional and business services accounted for just 10 percent of the area’s employment, or roughly 60,000 jobs. Ten years later, the picture was dramatically different: Largely because of cutbacks at textile mills, the Charlotte metropolitan area had lost almost 20,000 factory jobs.
But, at the same time, employment in professional and business services had more than doubled to roughly equal the number of manufacturing jobs that existed here in 2000. Employment in education, health, and leisure had also expanded rapidly.