Job growth projected for NE Ohio
YOUNGSTOWN — Want a job in the next 10 years in Northeast Ohio? Your best chance may be to get training in the information industry, projected to grow 34 percent over the next decade.
While the information industry is expected to experience the largest percentage growth, manufacturing, despite perceptions that it is waning here, is projected to grow by 22 percent. It will remain, by far the area’s largest sector in terms of GRP (gross regional product), according to Team Northeast Ohio, a regional economic development group based in Cleveland.
GRP is the value of all goods and services produced.
Perhaps surprisingly, health care, which continues to advertise for and pay bonuses for certain skills, is expected to grow only 2 percent over the next 10 years. Local conditions, such as significant capital investments by health-care providers, however, are not factored into the forecast, according to Team NEO’s quarterly report released today.
The report is primarily based on data gathered by Moody’s Economy.com, a well-known source of economic data and forecasting. Team NEO, an economic development joint venture that includes The Regional Chamber, markets a 16-county area in Northeast Ohio to the rest of the country and around the world.
“We go out and proactively market the area and bring back investment leads and direct them to the appropriate counties,” said Carin L. Rockind, Team NEO vice president for marketing and communications.
“One of the purposes of the quarterly report is to give people insight into the future so they can see where to train,” Rockind said.
There is a great opportunity in the information sector, which includes information technology, media and libraries, said Richard Seifritz, Team NEO manager for research.
The information sector is an area where Northeast Ohio lags behind and in which new jobs are opening. “We want to get the existing companies to come here and new companies to start up here,” Seifritz said.
Also, he noted, the higher-paying jobs are projected to grow 7.5 percent over the next 10 years, while the number of lower-paying jobs, in aggregate, are not expected to grow at all.
Part of the area’s problem is the perception of ‘doom and gloom,’ which comes from the media and others who are so fixated on the large employers that they don’t see the smaller employers, said Thomas A. Waltermire, Team NEO chief executive officer.
“The unfortunate part of economic transformation is that we lose jobs by the thousands and gain them by the tens,” he said.
But, the numbers don’t lie. While there have been large job losses, the workforce in the region has, on average, stayed about 2 million over the last 15 years, and the GRP has increased in 14 of the last 15 years, with 2001 being the lone exception, Waltermire said.
That being said, the Team NEO report notes that unemployment in the region is 5.75 percent compared with 4.5 percent nationally.
The key to getting better-paying jobs in the growing areas of the economy is training. Even people with low-paying jobs are building skills that they can parlay, with a little bit of education and training, into better jobs, Seifritz said.
“What we need to talk about is our workforce catching up skillwise,” he said.
alcorn@vindy.com