Normally, when we publish a study such as our High Value Labor Quotient, the accompanying story would feature a science, medical or other knowledge-based company employing cutting edge technology. In fact, it was primarily for executives of those companies that we originally developed that ranking.
Why, then, did we feature the Bell Helicopter plant in Amarillo, Texas, this year to illustrate the importance of highly-educated workers? Because college and advanced degrees are not just for scientists and engineers engaged in exotic research and development. College degrees are becoming the rule rather than the exception.
The days of low-skilled workers manning the assembly line are long gone. With the widespread use of productivity-enhancing computers and robotics in our nation’s manufacturing facilities, there are fewer and fewer jobs for unskilled workers.
| Employers need intelligent workers who can grasp new ideas and concepts quickly, who can think for themselves, who can visualize the big picture. |
Employers need intelligent workers who can grasp new ideas and concepts quickly, who can think for themselves, who can visualize the big picture. It used to be that a high school diploma was the ticket to the middle class. Nowadays, one in four adults over the age of 25 possesses at least a bachelor’s degree, and in some metros — Boulder, Colo., for example — that figure exceeds 50 percent.
Education is the key to prosperity. There’s simply no way to sugarcoat that fact. Communities without a strong educational foundation — good public schools, community colleges, a local college or university — are at a severe disadvantage in the competition for good-paying jobs with a future.
The “sucking sound” (as Ross Perot so eloquently put it a decade ago) of jobs leaving the United States continues unabated, as other countries establish a relative advantage in certain industries or jobs. That’s the reality of the worldwide market.
There’s a saying that the definition of a recession is when your neighbor loses his job, while the definition of a depression is when you lose yours. You don’t get much more personal than a job. That’s the means by which you and I support our families, educate our kids, and provide for our golden years.
Still, some things are inevitable, and one of those is that our economy is constantly evolving. Entire industries come and go with regularity. To use another well-worn phrase, the only constant is change.
That is not to say, however, that there isn’t a certain amount of predictability in all this. First and foremost is that the United States’ relative advantage in the world economy will be in knowledge-based industries, and that requires an increasingly well-educated work force. A community that tries to set itself up in a cost-competition with India or Mexico or China is almost certainly going to find itself on the losing end.
The only way out of this predicament is to keep climbing, to go after those technology-based industries where the U.S. has a relative advantage. While it may be a daunting prospect to consider that your community is in direct competition with Boston and San Francisco and the Washington, D.C., metro for these cutting-edge jobs, at least there is light at the end of that tunnel.
The candle that produces that light is education. Certain communities have an abundance of well-educated workers, and they will prosper over the next couple of decades. Other communities are less well situated in terms of education and, unless they do something to change that fact, they will watch the world pass them by.
Of that fact I am certain.
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