Stay connected…Changes in our economy. Who are our graduates competitors now?

This is the second article in a series concerning the health of the community and obstacles we must over come in today's changing environment as it applies to us personally in Clay County

Change. A dirty word for some. A blessing for others. As a society grows, it changes. Most call it progress. Whether it's indoor plumbing or computerized tractors, life as it was several generations back has changed. Whether we welcomed it, as my grandmother did the automatic washer, or we got dragged into it, we still have it. Admittedly I am a relative "newcomer" to Clay County. My family and I moved here in 1995 so do not have very deep "roots" in local economy and society. Even so, I have visited the local historical museum with my kids on field trips and talked to many long time residents who reminisce about what a bustling area this was back when Arketex, various coal companies, and several other active businesses were in the area. Things obviously have changed. We no longer have local coal mining nor several other businesses that once kept our community thriving. Each year the local Great Dane Plant has fluctuations in its work force and just this past year we lost another company leaving over 100 people without jobs.

Why can't our community be competitive with the same resources now when it did so well in the past?

Because we were too comfortable where we were in the past so didn't see the importance of continuing to change.

What do I mean? One of the biggest changes we have had is globalization. This is when our competitive area is no longer Brazil, the county, the three county area, the state, or even the country. We are now in competition for business and jobs with THE ENTIRE WORLD! Scary I know. Before globalization, our community was part of a small society and there were needed items and services that only others in our community could provide. Telephone service, health care, farm products, and coal were all made or provided by local people. This gave local people jobs and so long as the coal lasted, an abundance of them. Some people were more highly educated like the lawyers and Doctors, and others weren't but that was okay as we still needed those skilled workers as well to work the mining equipment and fill other positions within the community.

Now however our world is smaller. We have faster and more reliable transportation. You can order items that we were formerly buying here via the internet. The chain stores are large companies who can buy in volume at lower prices from places on the other side of the world where as the "Mom and Pop" stores are limited to higher pricing as they are buying only a few items. Local factories are competing with companies from other countries as well who don't have to pay as high of a wage due to lower cost of living in those countries. Even some of our professional people in service industry have to compete with others who can provide the same over the internet. Those trained with computer skills, accounting knowledge and many other subjects in India, China, or Ireland, are just as accessible to the consumer here in Clay County as those who locally own like businesses right in Brazil or Clay City.

So our workforce is now in competition for jobs with the WORLD, not just others in Clay County, or even the state! So one who could feed a family of four on an 8th grade education in 1940's would now find himself in competition for let's say, for 1,000 jobs instead of for maybe ten…..So instead the other nine people in our county have to finish high school in order to be in the competition for those other 9 jobs. But wait! Many others in the world have also come to that conclusion so there are millions of people who not only have finished high school, but have gone on to get degrees in order to be competitive for those 9 jobs!! It's just like the farmers. A successful farmer 50 years ago had good yields but would those yields be considered successful today? So the typical Clay County resident is now in competition for jobs with people from ALL OVER THE WORLD!

Education, we all have to agree, has also changed over the past decade or two. Like the tuning of a car by listening to the sound of the carburetor. Most cars no longer even have a carburetor. Like the car, education is a totally different beast than it was when I was in school [We are talking in decades here. I will leave it at that].

[I credit much of the global information in this article to New York Times reporter, Thomas Friedman, and his book The World is flat and recommends it to the readers for more information on this subject].