It’s an elementary statement to say that things are constantly changing, but you don’t realize the immeasurable scope of some differences until you have comparisons.

A great example is the local job market.

When I was in high school over a half-century ago, if you weren’t going to college, you might be lucky and get a job with the New Jersey Zinc Company in Palmerton. If you were willing to travel you might go to Bethlehem Steel or Mack Trucks in Allentown to work. All offered wages that let workers purchase homes and feed their families.

Neither the Zinc Company nor Bethlehem Steel exists anymore.

Garment factories were plentiful for entry-level jobs. Virtually every town had “mills,” as they often were called. Virtually all of these have vanished as such jobs were sent overseas.

For comparison purposes, let’s look at the top employers in Carbon County from three decades ago, two decades ago and the present.

Here are Carbon’s Top 10 major employers in 1990, with the number of employees in parenthesis:

1. Kovatch Industries (600).

2. Gnaden Huetten Hospital (545).

3. Carbon County (535).

4. Zinc Corporation of America (300).

5. Scotty’s Fashions (237).

6. Kai-Jay Pants Company (185).

7. Wagner Division (150).

8 Ametek Westchester Plastics (120).

9. Fernbrook & Company (90).

10. The Times News (80).

Carbon County’s unemployment rate in 1990 was listed at 6.3%. By 1993, the unemployment rate was 8.9%.

Although about half of these locations are no longer in existence, today’s unemployment rate, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry, was 3.9% after the second quarter of 2024.

The Top 10 major employers in 2000 were:

1. Pencor Services Inc. (1,000).

2. Kovatch Enterprises (750).

3. Gnaden Huetten Hospital (650).

4. Palmerton Hospital (350).

5. Scotty’s Fashions (300).

6. Horsehead Industries (250).

7. Ametek Inc. (200).

8. Blue Ridge Pressure Castings (200).

9. Silberline Manufacturing (150).

10. Weatherly Casting & Machine (100).

Getting to the present, here are the Top 10 employers in Carbon County for the second quarter of 2024, according to state figures. The number of employees isn’t listed in the chart I saw.

1. St. Luke’s Hospital.

2. Carbon County.

3. Blue Mountain Resort.

4. Lehigh Valley Hospital Center.

5. Walmart Associates Inc.

6. Behavioral Health Associates.

7. Little Leaf Pa. LLC.

8. State government.

9. Blue Ridge Cable Technologies.

10. Palmerton Area School District.

It’s hard to comprehend that with so many major employers from the past disappeared that the unemployment rate is so much lower.

The state says the labor force consists of 32,600 people in Carbon, with just 1,300 unemployed.

Regardless, it’s interesting the way industries have come and gone in such a short period of time.

Ron Gower is a correspondent for the Times News.