After the latest in a series of crushing blows for the region's manufacturing sector, Business Editor Julia Breen looks at recent North-East job losses - and what is being done to reverse the trend.

"UNEMPLOYMENT is at an all all-time low in the North-East," says David Allison, director of business and industry at regional development agency One NorthEast.

It is cold comfort, he admits, for the thousands of workers who lost their jobs in the region yesterday. However, according to regional development agency One NorthEast figures, there are more than 9,000 job vacancies waiting to be filled in Durham alone.

"There is every reason to be optimistic that people can find alternative employment," says Mr Allison. "And the job vacancies show the region is doing well.

"If you look at Samsung, the great thing there was that within six months 80 per cent of the workforce had either found alternative employment or were in full-time training."

Samsung closed its factory in Wynyard last April with the loss of 425 jobs.

Only ten years ago, the North-East was welcoming inward investors, such as Samsung, Siemens and Fujitsu, with open arms, lauding the job opportunities of a bright new electronics dawn.

All three conglomerates have since left the region, finding the lure of $1-a-day workers in the Far East irresistible, and leaving a trail of job losses in their wake.

Critics say they only came to the region for the Government handouts of the 1990s. Fujitsu got more than £17m and Siemens was offered about £18m in "sweeteners" to win jobs for the UK.

Although LG Philips has been a stalwart in Durham for more than 30 years, it too accepted more than £5m from One NorthEast in the 1990s to secure 556 jobs there. However, in 1999, possibly knowing of its future plans, it declined a grant from the agency.

Mr Allison says the region does need some inward investment, but it also needs to build up its own companies and encourage entrepreneurs.

Despite a £500,000 grant to Black & Decker, in Spennymoor, County Durham, last month, and a sweetener to chemicals firm Huntsman, on Teesside, Mr Allison says 33 of the last 35 "selective finance for investment" grants went to small or medium-sized firms.

He also says that, despite a "Black Wednesday" for the region yesterday, recent investment at Nissan's Sunderland plant and the new plant being built by Huntsman, help to balance out the job losses.

However, Andrew Harrison, principal lecturer in economics at Teesside Business School, says that manufacturing - one of the giants of the region's economy - will continue to seep to the Far East.

"We have had this policy through the various development agencies of encouraging inward investment, especially in manufacturing, but the foreign investors often don't stay long.

"We may keep some high-value and high-tech manufacturing jobs, but more traditional manufacturing is likely to go. We need to diversify to stay strong."

Professor John Wilson, director of Teesside Business School, says: "Sometimes in all the hype of companies investing in the region, a great deal is said about inward investment - but over time things unravel and the cost per job created can be very high, the employment itself unsustainable, and the company's commitment to the North-East can be in question."

Mr Allison says One North-East is redressing the job losses by investing in small and medium companies.

"In this way, we in the region can be in control of investments, so we take control of our own decisions, and make sure the key decision-makers stay in the region."

He says the agency's focus is on investing in smaller companies, encouraging new technology through the region's centres of excellence, and ensuring skills match jobs.

And despite the headline job losses, the agency has made £16m investment in the region's companies in the past year, attracting £128.5m investment here. The grants have helped create 2,614 jobs.

In County Durham alone, the agency doled out 28 grants worth a total of more than £5m last year, creating 847 jobs and safeguarding a 742.

But yesterday, people were asking how many more job losses it would take before the problems of the region's manufacturing were addressed.

Perhaps the "sunrise" industries were the interim between the pits, shipyards and steelworks closing and the dawn of a new, diverse mix of companies in the region, and the region will start to learn not to put all its eggs in one basket.