There are jobs in Lansing. Just ask Doug Stites, CEO for Capital Area Michigan Works! (CAMW). Noting that there are numerous unfilled positions in information technology and healthcare in this area, Stites is a strong advocate for making sure our young people are well educated when they enter the workforce and have marketable skills. The goal of Michigan Works! is to help those who have been laid off or displaced find new employment and provide training opportunities either through Michigan Works! itself or in collaboration with the different training centers and colleges in the area.

As a governmental agency, does your organization work with private employment agencies?

We do a lot of work with staffing agencies. I feel very privileged that lots of them work with us….A lot of the recent hiring that’s been going on, particularly in manufacturing, has been on a cooperative basis between our agency and the staffing agencies who are representing interests for a lot of those employers.

Who comes to your office?

[For] anyone who is unemployed and going to get unemployment [benefits], it is a requirement of state law that you register that you’re looking for work...at a Michigan Works! agency. We put your résumé in the talent bank, and we certify that you have a résumé and meet the legal requirement.

Do you offer more services for the unemployed?

The ones who want to do more take classes on how to write a résumé, how to interview better. A lot of them want to do an inventory of skills. They’ve [been in a job] for 20 years, so they want to know, “How do the skills I’ve got apply today? I don’t know what it is I know. How does it transfer in 2007?...What do I have to do to get marketable skills?”…What we try to do is show them what their options are….It depends upon how motivated they are to get to a different place….We have a lot of great associates in this community [for retraining]….We’ve got all sorts of options. [But] a lot of people need basic remedial skills. They may not read or write or have basic computer literacy. You need to brush up on that before you enter the job market….[But] the hardest skill to acquire is motivation. If you have motivation, you can move mountains.

What new jobs do you see coming to the area?

I think most of the jobs we’re going to get in the region are going to come from the companies that are already here. We’ve got lots of jobs in the region right now in healthcare and information technology that we can’t fill. We’ve got 500 [IT positions]….That’s 9,500 positions in the three counties, and about half of them are end user positions in hospitals, insurance, and state government, and half of them are in IT companies…But they all require fairly sophisticated training, and they’ll pay way above average. We’ve got 500 jobs that pay $75,000 a year, and we can’t fill them.

What about manufacturing?

Manufacturing for this area, in the very recent past, has actually gone up modestly, but that’s bucking the whole state trend. That’s because of the [GM] Delta plant, some suppliers, and some military [contracts] for a couple of companies in the area, so we’ve had a net increase in manufacturing employment. But I don’t expect to see that over the long haul. We’ve gone down from 45,000 [manufacturing jobs] to 22,000. I think it will still slowly decrease here….Most of the [GM] jobs have been lost to automation ….They’re still making a lot of cars. They’re just doing it with less people.

What future is there for people who are not skilled or well educated?

The region has exactly the same number [each year] of dropouts and people who graduate [unprepared] for a post-secondary education….You’re going to live in a different world where if you’ve dropped out of school, have marginalized your skills, and haven’t gotten training, unlike your predecessors years ago…you’re probably going to live hand to mouth for the rest of your life. I’m just saying what it is. None of those employers who call here say, “Do you have anybody who dropped out of school and can’t read or write, and we want to pay them $15 an hour?” There are less and less economic opportunities for anybody who doesn’t have pretty remarkable skills….We’ve lost 350,000 jobs since the downturn of the economy.

What are some solutions you see to the current economic downturn?

The most basic challenge this region faces is we have had the good fortune to [have] jobs here that paid way above average….The problem is that day has ended and there are not enough of those jobs to have an effect on the economy….So we’ve dropped from the top range down to the middle and farther…Our quality of life is going to be determined by the sum of our education, and we can best be described as average….It doesn’t matter who you elect, this is not a partisan issue…but there is no way you can have a workforce that commends a great salary [unless] you have a highly educated workforce. The coefficient for education and earning is almost perfect….The Legislature can’t balance the budget on “average.”…We can’t fix it by government conversations. We’ve got to individually recognize that this is about [the] community. If your community is better educated, your state is better prepared to live off the revenues that that is going to generate.

We need to think about [education] as a community…We need to bring science and math out in our kids. That’s where the demand is and that’s where the jobs are going to be, and the other countries that we’re competing with understand that completely….We’re putting 30 percent of our [young people] out [without finishing school or having marketable skills], and that troubles me much more than the adults that are being dislocated by the economy….It’s not that the schools aren’t doing a better job because they’ve done terrifically better than 10 years ago. The problem is the economy is racing ahead…of education.