Economic Conference: Education key to Inland Empire growth Manfred Keil — associate professor of economics at the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance at Claremont McKenna College — gives the forecast at the fifth annual Inland Empire Economic Forecast Conference at Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario on Wednesday. By Neil Nisperos, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin POSTED: 10/29/14 Edward E. Leamer, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, speaks at the fifth annual Inland Empire Economic Forecast Conference at Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario on Wednesday. Jennifer Cappuccio Maher — Staff Photographer ONTARIO >> While the Inland Empire economy continues on the upswing, the growth of high-paying jobs and quality firms continues to be hindered by educational attainment levels. That was the message Wednesday from regional economists to business leaders at the fifth annual Inland Empire Economic Forecast Conference at Citizens Business Bank Arena. Keynote speakers Manfred Keil, associate professor of economics at the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance at Claremont McKenna College, and Edward Leamer, economics professor at UCLA and director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, said the key to bringing higher paying firms to the Inland Empire will be to increase the number of educated and qualified people in the job market. According to John Husing, chief economist for the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, the share of people who have a bachelor’s degree or higher in the Inland Empire is 20.1 percent, compared with 30.1 percent in Los Angeles County, and 37.1 percent in Orange County. “We have to make the area attractive to businesses to come here,” Keil said, “and I think the only way to do this is to have a better educated labor force that will be highly productive.” Leamer agreed. “Workforce development in our view is the key to the problems that the nation and the Inland Empire has,” Leamer said, “and we’ve been asleep at the switch as a nation for a couple of decades in letting our workforce development — meaning preschool, K-12, college and on-the-job training — we’ve allowed to deteriorate. “We don’t have a workforce that is suited to the post-industrial age. Now the problem with workforce development is it takes a couple of decades to get a kid ready for a high-quality job, but we as a nation need to recognize that investment in our kids is the No. 1 job of our parents and grandparents.” An audience member asked a panel how to improve workforce development. San Bernardino County Supervisor Gary Ovitt, who was on the panel, called attention to a $15 million federal grant recently awarded to Chaffey College to create a STEM Education Business Incubator, or SEPI, Center to focus on advanced manufacturing. The center will be located at California Steel Industries in Fontana, in a former administration building, and the hope is to open it in late 2015. “Chaffey College has received a grant that’s all about workforce investment and workforce training,” Ovitt said, “and they’re working with California Steel Industries and other industries to make sure the college is able to start training some of those individuals for those jobs as well. I think there’s training in some of the high school districts to make sure that if those students who don’t go to college hopefully have (vocational) experiences available to them.” Keil and Leamer also presented a picture of modest, though not spectacular recovery. They projected that the Inland Empire unemployment rate, at 8.7 percent , would steadily descend to 5.5 percent by December 2016. According to Keil, the number of employed Inland Empire residents is back to where it was before the Great Recession, if workers who commute out of the region are included. However, the new jobs, he said, are not as high-paying. “Growth in employment has been going well,” Keil said. “It’s just that the kinds of jobs that have been generated now are not of the highest quality. We have replaced jobs in construction and manufacturing in particular with jobs in leisure and hospitality and to an even larger extent in education, health, and those are not as high-paying as the ones before.” Inland Empire sectors that saw a net gain in employment when compared to the pre-recession level include education and health services, leisure and hospitality, government and logistics. Keil advised against raising the minimum wage in order to prevent a growth slowdown. “Increasing the minimum wage would have a detrimental effect on the continuing growth of the leisure and hospitality sector,” Keil said. A major problem for the region has been the loss of manufacturing and construction jobs, he said, with manufacturing losing 33,000 jobs and construction losing 52,000 since late 2007. The key to bringing back manufacturing jobs, Keil said, will be to offer tax credits or create special economic zones favorable to manufacturing. “Give the manufacturer some incentive to locate here initially,” Keil said. “There’s always the talk about (loosening environmental) regulations, and I’m never quite sure of what to make of it. I’m sure regulation here is heavy, but that did not deter people in the past from coming here. There are so many reasons people want to come to Southern California.” redlandsdailyfacts/business/20141029/economic-conference-education-key-to-inland-empire-growth
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 20:47:44 +0000
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