By The Associated Press

CARLISLE, Ky. - With clothing manufacturers continuing to drain out of Kentucky, many rural communities face the challenge of helping thousands of laid-off workers move forward.

The latest blow was last week's announcement that Jockey International was shipping out, eliminating 440 jobs at three plants in Carlisle, Mount Sterling and Maysville.

Experts say the textile companies are moving production to other countries where labor costs are lower or are consolidating operations at U.S. facilities.

Carlos Cracraft, labor market analyst for the Kentucky Department for Employment Services, said the number of employees in apparel manufacturing has plummeted by 70 percent in the last 13 years, from 32,200 to 8,900.

For example, Liberty had 1,000 jobs at an OshKosh B'Gosh Inc. plant that was the company's largest in the United States. But the jobs were gradually moved to Latin America, and now there is only a distribution center with about 100 employees, said Arlen Sanders, director of economic development for Liberty and Casey counties.

"Unfortunately, they are continuing to export our jobs," Sanders said. "In small, rural communities where we've had these jobs, it hurts."

The losses in Kentucky are part of a national trend. Michael Wald, an economist with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, said U.S. apparel makers cut 556,000 jobs - 65 percent of the industry - in the last decade. While average compensation costs in 2002 were $21.33 an hour in the United States, Wald said they were $2.38 in Mexico and $2.57 in Brazil.

The job drain has been tough to overcome in Casey, Adair and Green counties, where officials say there are fewer jobs since the OshKosh and Fruit of the Loom plants closed in the mid-1990s.

Fruit of the Loom was once the state's second-largest manufacturing employer, with about 11,000 workers. Now the only facilities that remain in Kentucky are the Bowling Green headquarters and distribution center and a textile plant in Jamestown.

Other communities have been able to rebound. Campbellsville lost a Fruit of the Loom plant where 4,000 people were once employed.

Local leaders say they relied on Campbellsville University to help with training of laid-off workers, but also started a formal economic development program for the first time.

It helped that Amazon.com took over some former Fruit of the Loom space to add 1,000 jobs, but a dozen other new manufacturing and service employers also arrived. The number of net jobs in the county is now higher than before Fruit of the Loom closed.

Paul Osborne, who was mayor when Fruit of the Loom left, says "many, many wounds are healed."

Workers at Jockey International wonder what their fate will be. The company is the largest manufacturing employer in Carlisle, and when a Jockey sewing plant shut down four years ago, Nicholas County's unemployment spiked 12 percent. More than 300 of the city's 1,700 residents lost jobs.

Mayor Gene Kelley said Jockey contributed about $80,000 annually to Carlisle and Nicholas County in payroll taxes and accounted for about a third of the purchases from the gas and water utilities.

"What are we going to do if they keep letting our jobs go overseas?" said Debby Ecton, 46, a knitting plant mechanic. "Everybody can't be doctors or lawyers or nurses, and not everyone wants to be. I was perfectly content working my 40 hours a week and coming home."

She's thinking of obtaining training to be a teacher or landscaper.

Company officials plan to provide severance pay and benefits as well as help workers find new jobs. When the sewing plant closed, federal job-training money allowed many garment inspectors and seamstresses to learn to become medical assistants and bookkeepers.

Jockey also plans to meet with local leaders in search of a business to replace the factory.

But the business that moved into the Jockey sewing plant, Panel-Master Industries, went out of business too.

"We didn't look at them as a quick fix," Nicholas County Judge-Executive Larry Tincher said. "We looked at them as an opportunity and a chance."

Craig McAnelly, an economic-development specialist at the Bluegrass Area Development District, said it's difficult to diversify the economy in Carlisle, where most other jobs are in agriculture, government and education.

"They're back to square one," McAnelly said.

Terry Trussell, who's worked at Jockey for 35 years, has been diagnosed with skin cancer and says he can only hope to find another factory job to support his 9-year-old daughter.

In the days since Jockey announced the closing, he has cried alongside supervisors and co-workers who have never had a job outside bleaching underwear cloth.

"I've given my life out there," Trussell said. "I thought I'd retire after 50 years."