State official says education key to job opportunities

WALKER - There will be a lot more opportunity for high-quality employment in north-central Minnesota in the next 10 years if people begin now to educate their children at a young age about how to be innovators.

This is the message Dan McElroy, Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, brought to Cass County Economic Development Corp. members at their annual meeting Nov. 1.

China has been educating six times as many engineers as the United States in recent years, while the U.S. has been educating six times more lawyers, he said.

The 10-year job outlook for north-central Minnesota is that there will be 30,000 new jobs created and 70,000 retirees who will have to be replaced, McElroy said. Children need to start in middle school and high school to learn about the wide variety of potential career opportunities, he said. They need to focus on more math and science classes to prepare, he added.

More businesses will need to do the kind of innovating Cavcom has in Walker to take less functional products and combine them into one safer, more comfortable, more effective product, he said.

Another example he cited is the proposed mine-to-metal manufacturing plant proposed for northern Minnesota where one company will mine the taconite and convert it to steel onsite. This saves transportation costs to a plant elsewhere and saves energy by not needing a second heating process to make the steel, McElroy said.

This also saves cycle time, so products can reach market faster, he added.

Seventy percent of manufacturing still is done in North America, despite all you read about shifting manufacturing to China and other locations, according to McElroy. Manufacturing jobs lost in the U.S. are mainly due to increased productivity, he said.

Low prices for overseas production actually aren't as attractive to most manufacturers as is the savings achieved by home production involving less shipping cost, shorter cycle time, higher quality employees and safer protection for company designs, he said.

Arctic Cat built its engine manufacturing plant at St. Cloud rather than going elsewhere, McElroy noted. It has been so successful that the plant now employs 100 people instead of the 50 the firm initially expected.

The 3M Co., known for encouraging employees to be innovative, currently makes 60 percent of its sales from products the firm introduced within the last three years, McElroy said.

Parents have become more involved in their children's education since schools began offering Internet tracking for homework assignments and achievement reports to parents, McElroy said. Parents, grandparents and community leaders need to expand that interest in students to encourage schools to offer more science and math programs and to provide students more opportunities to find out about innovative career options earlier, he said.

DEED offered to present a program on this issue to school superintendents throughout the state. Only three superintendents showed up, he said.