Each year at this time, thoughts of strategic planning become the focus as we all look into next year.1 For North Carolina, such planning is of paramount focus given the structural economic challenges facing our state. There are no quick fixes. First, on the jobs front, there is a widening mismatch between the labor force we need and the skills of many of our current workers. This gap was noted before but in the past two years our manufacturing base has evolved even more toward higher value-added production that requires ever higher skilled workers. Over the past 20 years, manufacturing job growth has both diminished in quantity of jobs and yet upscaled in terms of the quality of skills needed. Second, the disparity of economic performance between rural/small city and large city economies has widened. Rural/small cities that historically are more dependent on a single dominant manufacturing facility continue to find that the facility is leaving. Meanwhile, growth sectors in the economy, technology, medicine and financial services continue to favor the major urban areas. Third, the hard reality of educational underachievement continues to pitch a large part of the population into a future of disappointing incomes. North Carolina has long prided itself, with justification, on its elite schools. Yet, the majority of students do not attend these schools. Instead, the need for retraining workers has never been clearer and the continued underperformance in terms of high school graduation rates hobbles the progress of many. Finally, the budget gaps between political promises and our revenue base have never been clearer.
As North Carolina moves forward, our strategic vision cannot be more of the same superficial projections of past performance but rather to recognize that future success will require a much broader vision of our goals and the uncertainties of policy initiatives that will give the state a chance of success rather than a guarantee of failure as we move into the 21st century.
