Economy
As of January 2007, the largest single employer in the city was the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior which has hired roughly 2,250 policemen. The second-largest employer is the United States government. The 101st Airborne 3rd Brigade was stationed at Tal Afar Airbase in 2003-04 and its 1st Battalion was stationed in the town proper.
Important industries in the region include agriculture, especially the harvesting of wheat which historically has been processed at the city’s state-run granary, and the production of cement and macadam.
Unemployment was estimated to be at levels as high as 80% as of August 2006.
Read more about this topic: Tal Afar
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.... for really new ideas of any kind—no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be—there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The basis of political economy is non-interference. The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. Do not legislate. Meddle, and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)