Word: regions
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Demand for workers is most acute in New England, with a 3.3% rate of unemployment. In New Hampshire the figure is 2.3%, the lowest in the U.S. The region's economy has been fueled by military contractors, who benefited from the defense buildup of the early 1980s, and by the small firms that have flourished in the high-tech corridor along Route 128, near Boston. The explosive expansion in the demand for labor has far exceeded the region's growth in supply. In Massachusetts, for example, the number of jobs grew 11.6% between 1980 and 1986, while the population increased...
...grow, many businesses have started recruiting as actively as the Army or the Navy does. To attract engineers, Compaq, a fast-expanding computer manufacturer, has chosen the old-fashioned hard sell. For a three-day recruiting drive in Dallas, Compaq sent invitations to 3,000 engineers and blanketed the region with radio and print advertisements. To promote the company's picturesque headquarters, set in a forest in Houston, Compaq imported pine and sweet gum trees, along with park benches and lampposts. The price tag for the extravaganza...
Some firms look even farther afield and try to recruit workers outside their region. But often the chief obstacle to attracting new employees is the high cost of housing, so some potential employers have tried to compensate. An auto-parts division of Textron based in Dover, N.H., gives some of its new white-collar employees short-term "bridge" loans for housing at below-market interest rates. Last year the state's average home price was $136,000, nearly 60% higher than the U.S. median...
Hispanic elements can also bring contemporary relevance to distant, avant- garde work. For the La Jolla Playhouse's stunning production of Odon von Horvath's Figaro Gets a Divorce, a satire of dictatorship written at the height of the Nazi era, the action was shifted to a mythical region populated by figures reminiscent of Imelda Marcos, Anastasio Somoza and Fidel Castro. Harvard's American Repertory Theater relocated Jean Genet's The Balcony, a transvestite dream of sexual corruption in high places, to an unspecified Latin city gripped by revolution. Says JoAnne Akalaitis, who staged The Balcony: the Latin flavor imports...
Granted, the joint U.S.-international presence in the Gulf will not, by itself, quell Iranian revolutionary ambitions or safeguard the region's oil reserves. Other steps are desirable as well, such as an international arms embargo and a boycott of Iranian oil. The only problem is that, so far, such diplomatic efforts have stalled, as China and the Soviet Union have refused to join an arms embargo...