Whose economic were heavily based on the making of steel, and the manufacturing of peoducts like automobiles. In the 1960s and 1970s, many of manufacturing jobs moved to the southen U.S or oversea, and there changes led to the abandonment of factories, to higher unemployment rate, and to lower populations in major cities. Because these negative changes were all due to the decay pf industries involving steel, a new term was coined to describe this depressed region: the "Rust Belt