Taimerica Management Company

WHERE THE JOBS ARE--

AND AREN’T

 What are the hottest industries for the economic developer interested in job attraction?  None of the top-10 are in manufacturing (Click here for the table ). 

•  Some of these SIC codes don’t tell their story well.  SIC 4822 “Telegraph and Other Message Communications” sounds so low-tech but this is the pager industry with  specialized telephone services thrown in. 

• Information Retrieval Services ( names like AOL & Yahoo ring a bell?) doubled in size in the last 4 years, and the number of firms tripled.

• Where was the growth in Info Retrieval Services?  California, perhaps? Five Western and Mid-Western states—Indiana, Idaho, Washington, New Mexico and Arizona-- topped California’s growth rate. 

• The big growth in jobs between 1997-2000 was in computer programming and services, which collectively added nearly 100,000 jobs each year. 

• Many states closed the IT gap with California.  Maine, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Utah and Kansas all grew faster than California (as did 18 other states) in computer services. 

• Five states --Maine, Hawaii, Nevada, South Carolina, Massachusetts and Montana-- grew faster than Texas and California in computer programming.  The entire IT revolution is clearly not being written in Austin, Boston and Silicon Valley.

•  Pundits’ complaints about “low wage service jobs” don’t show up in our analysis either.  The hottest industries pay an average of $80,000/year. 

•  The worst performers of all industries were in the manufacturing sector.  Production sharing with the third world continues to shrink the textile and apparel sector (Click here for table).   Employment declines of 40% were typical of the slowest growing sectors in the USA.

CLUSTER WORK

Taimerica just finished a cluster study in Albuquerque where we looked at reasons why Austin has seen stronger tech growth over the last 20 years, even though Albuquerque has more scientific R&D than any community in the USA.  A sound strategic plan followed for 20 years, strong recruitment of technology companies, a few IPO's (such as at Dell Computers) and a large engineering workforce were reasons that Austin's growth accelerated after 1980.

PLASTICS AND POLYMERS

In Mississippi we are working with the Institute of Community and Economic Development and the Mississippi Polymer Institute at the University of Southern Mississippi on a major statewide study of the polymer and plastics cluster.  Among the innovations we brought to the study are an assessment of the state's workforce strengths for polymers and an understanding of the corporate strategies that guide polymer companies in Mississippi.  

The assessment of corporate strategies is based on our proprietary database of patents.  We can select a technology, can identify the companies that are active in the R&D field (polymers and plastics in this case)  and can pinpoint the R&D centers that are producing the patents. This takes the guesswork out of technology assessments.

 The Mississippi Polymer Institute, created in 1993, has been an effective economic development tool for the state.  They are the leading source of process and product innovations in the Mississippi polymer cluster and the Institute now generates a 1600% return on state investment. 

 Taimerica Management Company has unique resources for targeting and strategic planning. Our databases, and our thinking, aren’t limited to manufacturing.  We’d be happy to quote you a price on your next RFP.  Looking for business in niches overlooked by your competitors is an effective way to increase your organization’s performance.

Click here to contact Taimerica

or call Ed Bee @ (985) 845-1934

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