JACKSON - Southern states must recognize they are competing in a global economy that requires greater investment in education and workforce training, a regional researcher said Tuesday.
"There are too many factors pushing us toward a global economy," said Jim Clinton, executive director of the Southern Growth Policies Board.
"We demand efficiency. We demand that manufacturers, that businesses provide us with the best possible product at the lowest possible price. That puts businesses under pressure to deliver that product the best way they can and that means the manufacturing jobs go overseas," said Clinton, who met the governor, lawmakers and business representatives at the Capitol.
The South has lost about 400,000 manufacturing jobs in the past 10 years with most of them going across the border to Mexico and Central and South America, Clinton said.
He said the South grew faster than the rest of the nation between 1950 and 1980.
The growth had slowed by 1984 amid a failure to capitalize on high-tech jobs.
He said when technology driven jobs did come to the South they were from out of state and filled by people from out of state.
"We have an opportunity not to repeat our recent history," Clinton said.
It will take legislators, educators and business people to ensure that continues to happen, he said.
States that do nothing more than keep workforce training programs in place just to attract federal funding will make nothing happen in economic development, he said.
Clinton said business and legislators must decide what job skills are needed in their state and what education is needed for those skills.
"Education is too important to leave to educators; you must get business involved," he said.
He said a coordinated program of education and work force also requires identifying those not participating in the work force - minorities, women, the disabled - and gearing training toward them.
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