By Monica Chen

mchen@heraldsun.com; 419-6636

DURHAM — Whether or not the Great Recession has ended is still up for debate, but one thing is sure: Workers and businesses suffered in 2009.

In Durham, as elsewhere, the recession sent unemployment to record heights this year, shuttering long-time businesses and stalling the opening of new ones.

In January, when The Herald-Sun visited the local branch of the N.C. Employment Security Commission, we found dozens of men and women there with different skills and backgrounds — from a former janitor at a rest stop to a former accountant with IBM — all filling out forms and searching for jobs.

For the rest of the year, the numbers of the jobless continued to climb, reaching record highs before tapering down a bit to 8.0 percent for October, the most recent month available.

In that month, there were 11,265 people counted as unemployed in Durham County, and 20,004 unemployed in the Durham MSA, comprised of Durham, Orange, Chatham and Person counties.

The local job market wasn’t helped by mass layoffs in The Research Triangle Park, where IBM, Nortel and other companies that employed thousands of people here at their peaks shrank as a result of the recession.

Small businesses in Durham also suffered. Citing the recession as one of many reasons, owners of long-time businesses Pizza Palace and Couch’s Kwik Kar Wash closed their doors and construction company Mainline Contracting filed for Chapter 7 liquidation, putting 200 people out of work.

But at the same time, businesses have continued to open in Durham amidst the gloomy economic climate. Durham and the rest of the Triangle continued to make top rankings around the country.

And ending the year on an optimistic note, IEM, a Baton Rouge, La.-based risk management consulting firm announced in December that it will move its headquarters to Durham’s Research Triangle Park.

The company will move 350 workers and has plans to hire 430 more people in the next six years.

Whether and when the recession will end for workers in 2010 remains to be seen, but as IEM President and CEO Madhu Beriwal pointed out, the company was attracted to the area for its intellectual capital — something which has remained in the area during this economic downturn.

“We need highly educated people ... and this area, with all its universities, can provide them,” she said.