Deindustrialization

Deindustrialization is the through-line of Janesville, Amy Goldstein’s account of what happens to a single-industry town after its anchor employer leaves. When General Motors handed the Janesville assembly plant “its death sentence” in 2008, the loss rippled outward: middle-class GM families “tumbling out of the middle class” as $28/hour wages, SUB pay, and 401(k) cushions disappeared, the town keeping up appearances over “an economic earthquake.” Goldstein’s central empirical finding is a Retraining paradox — laid-off workers who went back to school at Blackhawk Technical College fared worse on employment and pay than those who didn’t, despite a bipartisan “retraining gospel” embraced by Paul Ryan and Obama alike.

The book treats deindustrialization not just as job loss but as a City Building problem — a town’s attempt to reinvent its economy (Forward Janesville, Rock County 5.0, University of Michigan economic-adjustment consultants) after losing its anchor. In Kyle’s reading it sits in a “community-decline cluster” alongside Hillbilly Elegy and Our Towns documenting working-class America, with Flying Blind supplying the industrial-decline parallel.

Context: Deindustrialization refers to the decline of manufacturing employment and capacity in advanced economies — especially the US Rust Belt and Midwest from the 1970s onward — as plants closed or moved offshore. The 2008–09 financial crisis accelerated a wave of auto-plant closures, of which Janesville’s GM plant was an emblematic case.

Where this appears

• Janesville — a book-length case study in manufacturing-town collapse and the failed retraining experiment that followed the GM plant closure.