THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 29, 1996 TAG: 9609280009
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 90 lines
Many of the factors that affect the Hampton Roads economy are largely out of local control. Two that spring to mind are the size of the Navy and the number of aircraft carriers being built - not to mention the health of the national economy.
But one factor that profoundly affects our economy is within our control: the education and training of our workers.
At a panel discussion last week in Williamsburg, two economic-development professionals and two corporate executives stressed that the affordability, availability and caliber of a region's workers play a key role in a company's decision to locate or expand there.
Labor is becoming the No. 1 issue of economic development, said Julius A. Denton, president of the Virginia Peninsula Economic Development Council.
We asked Hampton Roads Planning District Commission Director Arthur Collins to describe the labor force here, and he gave us numbers that tell a story.
First the moral of his story: Train the workers. We can do that, and we must do that to attract companies paying high wages. We're fools if we don't.
Now, the story in numbers:
Of Hampton Roads' 1.5 million residents, 862,000 are employed. Many are part-timers; many more are underemployed. But 862,000 residents get paychecks.
Three percent are in shipbuilding and repair; 5 percent are in other manufacturing; 4 percent are in communications and technology; 4 percent are in tourism, 2 percent are in ports (land, sea and air) and 21 percent are government employees, including the military.
Altogether those sectors of the economy account for 39 percent of all workers. In one sense they are the most important workers, because those are the sectors that make money for Hampton Roads - that bring money here from elsewhere.
For example, when a Gateway computer made here sells in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, money from there comes here. When a Norfolk sailor is paid, tax money from around the country comes here. A Canadian tourist spends money in Virginia Beach that this region would not otherwise see. You get the picture.
The remaining 61 percent of Hampton Roads workers are in the support sectors. That breaks down to 38 percent in retail, construction and services; 13 percent in legal, financial and medical; 5 percent in infrastructure, including police and firefighters, highway building and garbage disposal; and 5 percent in education.
Sixty-one percent of the workers provide the support that enables 39 percent of the workers to bring the region new money.
Our 61-39 ratio of support workers to frontline workers is typical for an urban region, Collins said. Just as the military has far more support troops than combat troops, a city has far more workers providing services than frontline workers competing with the world to bring home the bacon.
But here's the rub for Hampton Roads:
Of the sectors that fetch money for the region, three key ones are either stable (a nice way of saying not growing) or shrinking: manufacturing; shipbuilding and repair; and government employees, including military. Those three sectors account for nearly three-fourths of the jobs that bring money into Hampton Roads.
Ouch!
Again, the moral of the story: To attract industries needing a skilled work force, train workers.
``Having a skilled work force, a disciplined work force, is increasingly important,'' Collins said. It is of special importance, he said, for the frontline workers.
Support workers here do not compete with support workers elsewhere: A Portsmouth firefighter does not compete with a Belgian firefighter, for example. But frontline workers, the ones bringing the region outside income, must compete internationally. Workers for a company making computers here compete with workers for companies making computers everywhere else.
In Hampton Roads, support workers must do everything possible to enable frontline workers to compete successfully. That includes building adequate roads and schools. That especially includes training frontline workers in the skills the modern economy requires.
``If you have a well-trained work force,'' Collins said, ``you are more productive. If a company doesn't have to train or retrain people, its cost for doing business is less. It is therefore more competitive in the world economy.''
Although teachers here don't compete directly with teachers elsewhere, if their students fail to learn, while students elsewhere succeed in learning, our frontline workers will fail in global competition.
Education and training - not technological research and development - have proven to be the most effective way of boosting an organization's performance, said Robert G. Templin Jr., president of the Center for Innovative Technology, a public-private organization that promotes the application of technology in Virginia.
``I would venture to guess Virginia's Achilles heel is its work force,'' Templin said during the panel discussion in Williamsburg.
Here's the good news: The worker training that Templin says we need to do, Collins says we can do. We'd better. So much depends on the frontline workers, and their success depends on training. by CNB