By Kip Tabb | Outer Banks Voice
At a Nov. 12 symposium hosted by the Outer Banks Workforce Network at the Coastal Studies Institute, North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall described a growing business sector, but also addressed challenges facing the state’s workforce.
Focusing on the community members “who fuel our community and economy,” the Outer Banks Workforce Network is intended to communicate workforce needs to community leaders. The Network has placed particular emphasis on housing access, childcare and career planning. Home |Outer Banks Workforce Network
Over the past year, the Network has conducted a series of events, including an April gathering at Jennette’s Pier that focused on housing; a mid-May gathering at Dowdy Park that focused on childcare; and a late May meeting at the College of the Albemarle (COA) Dare Campus that dealt with career planning.
At the late May COA meeting, organizer Whitney Knollenberg, an associate professor in the Department of Recreation and Tourism Management at NC State, told the Voice that “I’m visualizing this literally as a network of individuals who work in the Outer Banks” with a goal “to bring together those who work in the Outer Banks to connect with each other. I’m not seeing a space to meet a lot of young professionals out here.”
Aside from Marshall’s remarks, the Nov. 12 symposium also featured three panel discussions that focused career planning, childcare and housing.
At the event, Marshall pointed to a “homegrown expansion of businesses,” in a state where more than 17,000 new businesses were created as recently as May 2025. In addition, she reported that 162,000 new businesses were created statewide in 2024.
There are storm clouds, though. Marshall said that at least 50 percent of new businesses fail and cited that impact of economic uncertainty on the state’s small businesses.
“The uncertainty…is so detrimental to small businesses…They don’t have much cushion out there,” Marshall told the Voice. “So when something like tariffs interrupts supply chains, they really are the downstream victim of all of those kinds [of uncertainty].”
She also said the ongoing crises in workforce housing and childcare must be addressed to meet the needs of the state’s workers. “A lot of things about housing and daycare are not near-term solutions,” she told the audience.
Katie Duke, Director of Early Childhood Policy at EducationNC, thanked Marshall for the information on small business expansion, but added that “the Early Childhood [situation] looks exactly the opposite. Childcare centers and family childcare homes…have been closing at a rate slower than a lot of other states, but it is picking up due to the end of some recent supports.”
Duke cited “accessibility, affordability and…accessibility is very closely linked to what classroom] slots are available” as the “three cornerstones of childcare.”
Pointing to the announced closure of the last licensed childcare facility on Hatteras Island at the end of this year, she added that, “It’s a major issue in rural areas. Are you driving an hour, assuming Highway 12 is open, to get your kid to care?”
Childcare businesses, she noted, operate on very slim margins and to keep costs down, childcare professionals are paid “truly criminally low wages…They do that so they can charge less tuition to parents, even though, as a parent, you know it’s not cheap.”
As a panelist on the childcare discussion, Ethan Dodson, Director of Development for the Boone area Chamber of Commerce, discussed how the Chamber was able to help sustain childcare centers there.
Dodson said that even before Hurricane Helene devastated Boone and the surrounding areas, a Boone Chamber study had identified “600 [childcare] spots that we did not have in Watauga County, that we needed.”
“Hurricane Helene really exacerbated all these numbers,” Dodson said, adding that without childcare, parents would not be available for the work of rebuilding the community.
Describing the Chamber’s point of view as “very much through an economic lens,” he described a fundraising effort that led to paying “tuition for all families and licensed childcare facilities for the month of October after Hurricane Helene…It really propped up that industry. We probably would have lost more childcare centers had we not done that.”
Noting that problems facing childcare providers are consistent across the state, Duke suggested that “there’s a real opportunity here in North Carolina to think about early childhood education more as a public good, like we think of K-12 education.”
During the discussion on housing, panelist Bladen Boyd noted that the task of providing housing for the Outer Banks workforce comes with some particular challenges.
“You’re not only competing with other locals for a limited amount of supply, but you’re also competing with the vacation market. I think that’s become the biggest challenge,” the housing panelist said.
Boyd, who described himself as a 25-year-old IT specialist, said he felt that he had no choice but to move in with his parents when he returned to the Outer Banks after attending Appalachian State and doing graduate work overseas.
Boyd’s situation did not surprise panelist Scott Farmer, Executive Director of the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency. “Increasingly houses are becoming more multi-generational,” he said.
During breakout groups after the panel discussions, a number of ideas were discussed that could have some application in Dare County.
Paul Stavovy, Executive Director of the Cape Fear Community Land Trust, discussed the concept of a land trust owning the land on which a home is built so the homeowner would not have to bear the cost of purchasing the land, reducing the cost of development.
The discussion included an acknowledgment that the Dare Community Housing Task Force is transitioning to a housing nonprofit and will be in a position to develop strategies to generate more housing for the Outer Bank workforce.
In closing remarks, symposium moderator Whitney Knollenberg told attendees that, “This is our future. These are the folks that we want here, that we want to thrive, that we want to continue to make this community a great place to live, visit and be a part of.”