Document: Creating Quality Jobs - Transforming the Economic Development Landscape

Job creation remains a key measure of success for economic development efforts. But the time in which all jobs were “good jobs,” to a certain extent, is over. Growth in the economy is becoming increasingly bifurcated, featuring high-tech, high-wage jobs on one hand and low-wage jobs in the service sector on the other. Many “middle class,” medium-wage jobs have been downsized, automated or have gone off shore. Economic developers find themselves struggling to create jobs that deliver the kinds of wages and benefits that were standard in the industrial era.

As the role of economic developers has expanded to include everything from technology transfer to attracting retail to expand a community’s tax base, the profession must examine the types of jobs it is creating and how well they meet the needs of individuals and communities in a globalized, skill-based economy. In this context, the success of individuals equals the success of business and communities. 

Yet relatively little research has gone into exploring the issue of quality job creation from the economic developers’ viewpoint; most literature on the subject of quality jobs comes from the fields of workforce development or poverty eradication. This report aims to fill that gap and identify the role of economic developers in creating quality jobs and improving the quality of existing jobs. Equally important, this reportalso documents how economic development itself is transforming in response to a changing economy. To create quality jobs and rebuild the middle class in a global, knowledge-driven economy requires new strategies, new partners, new goals and new metrics of success. This report is a map to the emerging practice of economic development – which, as the case study research shows, must be more inclusive, strategic, adaptive and system-driven.