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GREENSBORO — The news about the Great Recession’s impact on Guilford County keeps getting worse.

It starts with jobs, or the lack of them, and trickles down from there.

Last month, the North Carolina Commission on Workforce Development issued a report that says Guilford lost more jobs between 2005 and 2010 than any other county in the state — nearly 11,000.

That number becomes more troubling when it’s compared with Guilford’s larger metro neighbors.

During that same time period, Wake County added nearly 30,000 jobs; Mecklenburg gained more than 20,000.

“The report is grim reading,” said Keith Debbage, a professor of urban geography at UNCG. “I can’t believe we are at the bottom. That is shocking.”

Such numbers will have long-term ramifications.

Those include extended periods of unemployment for those out of work and high levels of joblessness for years to come.

A report last month from the N.C. Budget and Tax Center said that, as of April, the state faced a job shortfall of more than 466,000.

That includes jobs lost since the start of the recession plus those needed to accommodate the continued growth of the working-age population.

At the state’s current rate of job creation, the report said, the shortfall will persist until 2030.

The director of the center, Alexandra Forter Sirota, called the job deficit “daunting.”

Locally, economists say, many of the lost jobs won’t come back and those that do will require skills that many displaced workers don’t have.

For many, the loss of a job brings other losses — health insurance, income, savings, homes, standard of living and retirement.

A report from the Brookings Institution says that between 2000 and 2009, median household income in the Greensboro-High Point area declined 21.4 percent, or about $11,000.

Among the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, the local decline was ranked the 99th largest. It’s also three times the national average.

The area’s poverty rate increased from 10.8 percent to 16.8 percent during the same time period, according to Brookings. That represents more than 50,000 people.

“It’s been a tough decade,” Debbage said. “It reminds us that much work needs to be done.”

One researcher calls the 2000s “a lost decade,” at least when it comes to jobs.

Both the state and the county ended the 2000s with fewer jobs than when the decade started.

“So far,” said John Quinterno, principal at South by North Strategies, a research firm in Chapel Hill, “the current decade has been no different.”

Although it’s true that Guilford added about 4,500 jobs over the first four months of 2011, the county has fewer people working now than in April 2010.

It has nearly 3,800 fewer people working now than a decade ago.

“You guys have struggled,” Quinterno said.

The extent of that struggle can be determined by comparing unemployment numbers.

In April, the jobless rate in Guilford fell to 9.7 percent, down from a high of 11.9 percent in February 2010.

During the two previous recessions — 1990-91 and 2001 — the Guilford rate peaked at 6.1 percent.

Even though the recession ended in June 2009, the local unemployment rate has been above 6.1 percent for 35 consecutive months.

As a reminder of what a healthy economy looks like, Guilford had an unemployment rate of 4.3 percent in April 2007 and 2.1 percent in April 1999.

Economists look back on the 1990s as boom times in North Carolina, as the state added jobs and residents at a rapid clip.

“That state,” Quinterno said, “no longer exists.”

It disappeared because many areas had not fully recovered from the 2001 recession when the one in 2007 hit.

When that happened, Quinterno said, the typical North Carolina household was “ill-equipped to weather the storm.”

A key reason an area gained or lost jobs during the recession depended on its industry mix.

Overall, according to the State of North Carolina Workforce report, Wake and Mecklenburg counties gained employment as a result of their mix of technology, health care and professional services jobs.

Guilford, on the other hand, lost jobs because it relied more on manufacturing, an industry that already had been hit hard by globalization and technology advances, especially in the areas of tobacco, furniture and textiles.

From 2005 to 2010, the top six job-losing industries in the Triad were in manufacturing and all were related to tobacco, furniture or textiles.

Statewide, manufacturing employment has declined since the mid-1990s.

Economists call this a “structural shift.” In Guilford, it means moving from a manufacturing-based economy to one focused on service and technology jobs.

“Why hasn’t Greensboro rebounded as some other areas of the state?” said Michael Brown, an economist with Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte. “It’s taking time for the area to retool its labor force.”

Economists say the decline in manufacturing jobs, hastened by the recession, will continue as firms adopt new production processes that will require fewer, but better trained, workers.

“Those individuals that have traditionally relied on manufacturing employment will continue to face an uphill battle as the evolution of the state’s economy leaves this portion of the population behind,” said a May report on North Carolina’s job outlook by Wells Fargo. “This economic evolution toward a higher skilled workforce will no doubt be a slow and painful transition.”

Even so, observers say they’re optimistic about the area’s future.

“I see a bright side,” said John P. Metcalf, a senior partner with the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce. “One of the things you have going for you in the Triad that Charlotte and the Triangle don’t is that you have a clean sheet of paper to work with. ... (But) somebody has got to put something on it.”

That’s happening, local leaders say, pointing to the area’s drive to become a major logistics center.

“In the next 10 years, we’ll be nowhere near the bottom in terms of employment creation,” Debbage said. “We’re going to get around this eventually.”

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com