13 Apr 2003
Sun, 13 Apr 2003
Creating Jobs vs. Finding Jobs
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette has an interesting article on the dilemma facing the unemployed in a city that's struggled to retain it's best and brightest. The article quotes Charlie Beck, director of Priority Two, a nonprofit employment assistance group:
"The people today have skills. They are highly trained, educated, the kind of people that Pittsburgh is crying for, and they are available right now,'' he said. "I'm talking about senior people. There are more people who made $100,000 in their last job unemployed today than there ever have been in the history of Pittsburgh. It's pretty amazing."
What's really curious to me is how the article doesn't mention self-employment, the creation of new jobs, or the startup culture even once. If you went back five years, that rhetoric was all the rage in this town. Now, it's all but dead. This trend is endemic to the region.
Oh sure, PA's got programs like SEA, but these appear to be far more of a placeholder than producing substantive change in the economy or culture. In the end, people will go where the work is, unless they are able to ceate work for themselves. This region has tremendous difficulty with new business creation and that remains a limiting factor to it's population stabilization and growth.
Posted at: 11:08 | permalink
