Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 2, 1992 TAG: 9202030159
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARJORIE SKIDMORE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
WHERE THE JOBS WENT
OUR world has changed, particularly for those who finished high school in the mid-'60s. Young people finishing high school in the '60s who did not go on to college went to work in the textile plants or garment plants. We saw them as successful, with homes, raising families, buying cars and doing everything that those who went on to college did.It's not the same today. Those jobs have gone to Mexico for 68-cents-an-hour labor, and will never be back in the Roanoke area, Virginia or our country. In the past 15 to 20 years, 1,200 high-paying manufacturing jobs have disappeared from the Roanoke area. They were the high-paying jobs that everyone wanted and that, for the most part, our young people out of high school could do.
What has replaced those jobs, as has occurred nationwide and statewide, are jobs in the service sector and in the retail and wholesale sectors - jobs that do not pay what jobs in manufacturing pay.
Manufacturing jobs once made up 28 percent of the openings listed with our office of the Virginia Employment Commission; they now make up about 16 percent. Where service and retail-trade openings had been about 25 or 26 percent, they now are close to 40 percent.
During a recent four-month period, average pay for jobs listed with us was $5.53 per hour; average pay for openings we filled was $5.35. Several years ago, the mayor's study on the homeless said it took $5.50 per hour to afford adequate housing in Roanoke.
We have an inadequately trained labor force to compete. We're not competing with Charlotte. We're competing with Germany and Japan. Companies in this area, or looking at this area, are also looking at Canada, Australia, places in France. We're competing with the world.
Students who go to college and don't finish, or who leave high school with General Education Diplomas, are not prepared to enter the world of work. People already in the labor force will have to be retrained or retaught or learn computers or whatever during the next six to eight years, like those of us who have had to do so during the past two or three years.
Marjorie Skidmore is job-service manager with the Virginia Employment Commission in Roanoke.