AS gleaming new factories turn out Airbus aircraft and Hyundai cars in Alabama’s urban centers, this small town that once was home to Russell Athletics shows the dilemma now faced by U.S. policymakers.

    Economic recovery has spread wide, with 34 U.S. states reaching new employment highs this year and thousands of counties now close to unemployment rates of the boom years earlier this decade, according to an analysis of federal data.

    The U.S. Federal Reserve has played a central role in engineering that recovery and has become progressively less worried about the nation’s job market, interpreting the slowdown in payrolls’ growth as a sign of near-full employment.

    But Russell’s abandoned headquarters in Alexander City stands as a reminder of forces the Fed’s massive easy money campaign is ill-equipped to confront. What is needed now is more akin to hand-to-hand combat, state and local officials say.

    What Alexander City could use, for example, is a US$4 million rail spur to connect its industrial parks with the nearby rail line, or more state help in paying the grading and utility connection costs to entice would-be investors, says former mayor Don McClellan.

    Or perhaps, he suggests, programs to boost the community college’s retraining of mid-career workers among thousands who lost jobs as Russell’s operations wound down for good after a 2006 takeover by Berkshire Hathaway.

    “It is much harder to recruit here,” said McClellan, now regional development chief. “When the state lands white collar jobs, it is in the metro areas.”

    As 2016 presidential candidates from billionaire Donald Trump to Bernie Sanders square off over the economy, the debate is not just about the number of jobs. The contenders and Fed officials alike also fret about sluggish wage growth, low productivity and the quality of positions being created.

    Yet Fed officials, who discuss whether to raise rates for the first time in a decade, recognize that for all their power they may lack the tools to address such concerns.

    “An interest rate hike is not going to affect job training in Macon County, Georgia,” said David Wiczer, an economist at the St. Louis Fed who studies labor market issues.

    U.S. state and county statistics show the spread of recovery, allaying some of the fears about permanent scars from the crisis. But they also show some persistent spots of high unemployment.

    Among more than 800 large counties surveyed annually by the U.S. Census, nearly 700 had by last year virtually returned to 2007 unemployment rates, a group that has most likely grown given a steady climb in payrolls this year.

    Some states, however, continue to struggle, whether with legacies of uneven development and racial segregation, or longer-term changes in the U.S. and global economies. Alabama and nine other states, accounting for 16 percent of national economic output both have yet to return to pre-crisis employment levels and have above-average unemployment rates. (SD-Agencies)