Most of the news about jobs and the economy is pretty bleak these days – and most economists agree that the recovery will be long and slow and that many lower-skill jobs that disappeared in the Great Recession will never come back.
That's certainly the bad news that we've all heard enough.
The Greater Louisville Project’s second Deep Driver of Change called for growing more 21st Century jobs and focused on professional and technical jobs as a proxy for jobs that tend to pay higher wages and offer more opportunity in the global economy. Those are the types of jobs that will come back as the economy recovers.
By that measure, Louisville seems to be holding steady at 35% of the working population, or 119,000. The percentage of residents engaged in those fields climbed somewhat earlier in this decade but hasn’t budged since the recession hit – which is actually good news in the context of the severe job losses and high unemployment experienced here and across the country over the last few years.
That percentage had risen 10 points since 1990 when only 26% of working residents held jobs in professional and technical fields like healthcare, business management, accounting, legal fields, science, teaching, and other areas. Now, as we said, the proportion seems to be holding steady at 35%.
The calculations behind the "Deep Drivers of Change" that The Greater Louisville Project put forward in 2006 as big community goals in education attainment, growing more 21st Century jobs, and Quality of Place found that Louisville needs to reach the point where at least 40% of its residents hold professional and technical jobs to rank in the top tier among its peer cities on that measure of economic vitality.
The indicator for 21st Century jobs will be featured in the 2010 Competitive City Report, along with many others to create an updated portrait of Louisville. It will be released Thursday, June 24, at 10 a.m. in an event that also will feature Carol Coletta, head of a national network of leaders called CEOs for Cities. The community forum will be held in the Theatre Conference room at the International Convention Center and is free and open to the public.