What do shifting economic sands mean for future labour supply? Jason Whittaker found an answer across the Pacific
By Jason Whittaker | January 13, 2009
When I meet Stephen Sweeney, a state politician from New Jersey, he is unshaven and wearing track pants. It is the day after election night and he was up until 3am watching the vote count.
He woke to find he had become the leading Democrat in New Jersey. Unpopular governor Jon Corzine was dumped, despite the strong support of Barack Obama, ushering in the first Republican since 1997 to have won any election in the predominantly blue-shaded state.
New Jersey seems like a little slice of mid-America on the coast. It’s a homely sort of place, shadowed by the major metropolises of New York and Philadelphia. Many of the suburban neighbourhoods are a picture of patriotic wholesomeness: white picket fences, American flags flying. The leaves are just turning, making these Stepford-style streets postcard-pretty.
I’m in the south of the state, in Gloucester county, on a media tour organised by the Greater Philadelphia investment body (grab the February edition of SupplyChain Review for the full story). A cluster of regions in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware are putting state rivalry aside to promote their logistics hubs as the new gateway to the American east.
Businesses in the area are excited by the prospect of the channel deepening to take place in the Panama Canal, which will open up the American east coast to the larger ships now plying the world’s oceans. There is the opportunity to take share from the west coast, and congested ports like New York, to drive a new round of economic growth in logistical services.
Sweeney isn’t afraid of turning his state into a freight cross-dock. In fact, he sees it as the panacea to growing unemployment fuelled by a sharp decline in manufacturing production.
Perhaps due to the lack of sleep, he talks straight and concedes things politicians in Australia won’t: large-scale local manufacturing is dead and workers must be retrained, for example.
“The US is a consumer now, not a manufacturer,” he tells me, hinting at the significant shift in demographic and economic sands all western nations now face.
A number of new wharf developments are on the drawing board for New Jersey (and in Philadelphia and Delaware, for that matter) to expand container stevedoring and bulk loading capacity. Sweeney hopes the people who have lost their jobs from factory closures will remain in the area and be ready to work on the waterfront when the new facilities open.
The state is taking a pro-active role in retraining these workers to give them the skills needed to participate in transport and logistics. The demand for workers will grow and Sweeney doesn’t want to see them move away.
Smart governments and smart businesses recognise that the demand for workers in this industry flat-lined in near-recession but another race for labour is warming up. And the transforming economy will throw up its own opportunities.
Where are the workers who were laid-off around the country as manufacturing plants closed? What of those in ‘brown’ industries that many predict could become extinct as we green our economy?
Politicians need to get real about what a globalised, carbon-constrained world really means.
Does it still make sense to prop up some manufacturing industries, or is it smarter to, like Sweeney, concede some ground and transition the workforce for where future demand will inevitably be? To provide the resources and support they will need to take up arms in transport and logistics industries? Those wise guys in ‘Jersey just might be onto something…
What do you think? Is Australia transition its economy and workforce in the right way? What do supply chain industries do to capitalise? Leave your comments below…