Clarke County welcomes new
business, jobs

By By Fredie Carmichael / staff writer
September 29, 2003
Clarke County officials welcomed a new business to town today.
Tony Fleming, president of the Clarke County Board of Supervisors, said supervisors will sign a contract today with South Carolina-based Magnolia Spinning a company that initially will employ about 45 people.
The company will lease the old Sunbeam building, on U.S. 45 between Quitman and Shubuta, from Clarke County.
Today's announcement comes more than a year after unemployment in Clarke County peaked at 20 percent in June 2002, the highest in the state at that time.
Unemployment remained in double digits and continued to lead the state for several months.
Recently, the unemployment rate for the county has hovered under the double-digit mark. In May, the rate stood at 9.5 percent; in June, it was 8.8 percent; and in July, it fell to 8 percent.
Jan D. Garrick, a Mississippi Employment Security Commission spokesman, said the new business should help boost Clarke County's economy and help ease unemployment rate.
Clarke County's economy has been in decline for more than a year ever since Burlington Industries closed its Stonewall textile and denim plant, putting more than 800 people out of work.
Clarke County supervisors have since been traveling around the country touting their county to prospective industries.
Fleming said the Magnolia Spinning will spin yarn out of cotton from the Mississippi Delta. Fleming said Burlington was known for having a good workforce in the yarn-spinning business, which helped the county land Magnolia