Lonely Newton

I’ve been to Newton, IA (population 15,579) many times. It is the headquarters of Maytag which recently put itself up for sale, a move that has rocked the community. Newton is a typical “company town” like Hershey, PA; Bartlesville, OK; or Rochester, NY. I wrote recently about Rochester, where Kodak has cut the workforce from 62,000 to 16,300 in the past 25 years and recently announced another 10,000 layoffs that will take place during the next two years.

Newton has gone thru similar cuts, from over 4,000 employees in the town four years ago to only 2,800 today. And, with a sale to Whirlpool announced today, it’s likely that number could fall dramatically. About half of the local jobs are manufacturing ones, which pay on average $34,000/year. Most of the headquarter jobs pay much more. Newton is likely to be devastated with what occurs as a result of this merger.

Maytag started in Newton in 1893. The nearby Amana Colonies originated the Amana brand at about the same time. There obviously has been an “appliance cluster” in this east-central area of Iowa for quite some time and brought a great deal of prosperity to the region.

I’ve seen what happens to towns that lose their major employers. I’ve lived thru it in my hometown. It is a gut-wrenching time for most local citizens. Perhaps the worst period of time is in that indecisive time, when you know that something bad is about to happen, but you just don’t know how bad it really is going to be and you imagine the worst. Virtually every town that I’ve seen go thru what Newton is going thru, end up recovering, being wiser for the experience and making the best of a bad situation. I don’t envy Newton right now, but hope that they land on their feet.