So-called rust belt towns like this earned their name back when steel mills first began migrating from Pennsylvania to locations having lower labor costs decade

So-called rust belt towns like this earned their name back when steel mills first began migrating from Pennsylvania to locations having lower labor costs decades ago. It was not so much in search of the cheapest labor, rather avoidance of the most expensive labor which was in this part of the US at the time. Almost anywhere else could provide a significant cost advantage in an increasingly competitive market. OTOH, during the decades when the high wages were prevailing in the area, this was a unique opportunity to build a certain amount of local wealth while it lasted. It is not from some form of strength that "retail jobs came to predominate", instead retail was all that remained after the actual wealth-creating engine had left the area. All retail could do was extract the remaing local wealth which had been generated during the times of better-paying employment with actual wealth-generating industries. Now that this remaining wealth is dwindling too, these jobs are becoming more unnecessary as the long tail of the middle class continues to be absorbed, their resources from above and their numbers from below. You can't have a consumer economy without an equal or greater amount of surplus wealth in the hands of consumers, even then it is completely unsustainable unless there is an ongoing source of new value being created for consumers in excess of value being permanently consumed by both producers & consumers combined. If producers are not a bigger part of the equation than consumers, you can not balance the equation.