Oh mining boom, we hardly knew ya...
HCN has been writing a lot lately about how the new mining boom is already going bust. Today, it got worse: global mining giant Rio Tinto announced it is laying off 14,000 employees, sending a clear message that the mining surge that was booming just a year ago has gone belly up. It's the biggest mining-related layoff yet, but not by any means the first. Mines are aching from the platinum and palladium diggers up in Montana, down to Colorado's and Utah's just resurrected uranium mines.
Rio Tinto's pain ripples. Though the company is based in Australia and England, its tentacles reach deeply into much of the West. It's involved in or owns projects ranging from Kennecott copper in Utah, to a boron mine in California, to Resolution copper in Arizona, to Sweetwater uranium operations up in Wyoming.
The mining bust is a huge double whammy for southern Arizona. First there was the housing downturn, which went extra deep into the suburbs of Phoenix; now this. Even big boxes are suffering down there, and shutting down, which is gouging municipal budgets that are highly dependent on sales taxes. For a while, copper's resurgence promised to replace a few of the job losses in the construction sector. No more.
And now this: Warm places are getting hit harder by the economic crisis than are others.
Ouch.
