The Rubber Industry Collapse

The collapse happened in a sequence, and the sequence is the whole lesson.

Step one, production. Between 1975 and 1981, Goodrich, Goodyear and Firestone all stopped mass-producing tires in Akron itself. They did not leave town. Headquarters and research operations stayed in the city while manufacturing moved elsewhere. General Tire's Akron plant closed in 1982. One small exception survives: Goodyear still hand-builds its NASCAR racing tires in Akron.

Step two, ownership. General Tire went to Continental of Germany in 1987. Firestone went to Bridgestone of Japan in 1988. B.F. Goodrich's tire business went to Michelin of France in 1990.

Step three, the cuts kept coming long after the plants went quiet. Goodyear cut about 12,000 jobs company-wide between 1989 and 1991 and announced about 7,200 more cuts in 2001. Those are company-wide totals; the sources do not say how many of those jobs were in Akron.

Now the size of it. A reliable single total for the rubber jobs Akron lost is hard to pin down, so treat any big round number with suspicion. The documented local counts are smaller and come in pieces: rubber and plastics manufacturing in the Akron metro area fell from about 26,000 jobs in 1980 to 16,000 in 1990, and from 14,400 in 2000 to just over 7,000 in 2007.

If you remember only the 1975 to 1981 window, you have step one and none of what followed.