Business Industry

Builders aren’t building and bulldozers are idle. New McMansions sit vacant. Businesses are declaring bankruptcy, and unemployment numbers are growing. Automakers want government bailout money because they can’t sell cars, in part because consumers can’t get loans from skittish banks,…

Difficult but not impossible is the way Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond describes the outlook for Georgians seeking work in 2009, even though the current downturn is expected to continue for many months. The numbers are sobering. The state shed some…

It’s midmorning and Flowers Foods CEO George Deese is near the end of a 30-minute meeting when he’s gently reminded by one of his executives that he has a plane to catch. Rising from his chair, Deese announces he is…

There’s an energy harvest in Georgia as utility companies look to the state’s abundant forests for a clean fuel stock to satisfy a growing appetite for electricity and lessen reliance on coal-fired plants that spew harmful greenhouse gases, such as…

Viewed from atop the 50-foot-tall earthen dike that surrounds a reservoir on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River, the topography ranges from marshy and swampy to pitted stretches of sand resembling a moonscape. With darkening storm clouds gathering…

Richard Sowell took a roundabout route from blood-spattered kitchen tables in the wee hours of rural south Georgia mornings to his current post as dean of the WellStar College of Health and Human Services at Kennesaw State University. His father…

It’s the Friday before Labor Day and 73 employees exit The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for the last time, the latest round of job buyouts at the tilting daily newspaper. As he watches colleagues leave for the longest holiday weekend of their…

It’s easy for a CEO to say he cares about his employees. But Ben Hinson of Mid Georgia Ambulance Service in Macon puts his words into action, giving loans up to $3,000 to employees who are struggling financially. If the…

Drivers rounding the curve near exit 16 on Interstate 520 in Augusta top a bridge stretching across manmade lakes, filled after a local company excavated clay to make bricks. In the distance are a cluster of stacks from industrial plants…

When he was first elected in 2002, Gov. Sonny Perdue set out to bring business practices and principles to state government – with a little help from his friends. The result was The Commission For A New Georgia (CNG), formed…