Bolstering Nevada's workforce key

Successful as the recent pitch to California businesses may be, a top Nevada economic development official says it's equally important for the state to pursue long-term strategies to strengthen its economy.

Bob Shriver, executive director of the Nevada Commission on Economic Development, said last week that a marketing campaign warning California companies that their survival is at stake has generated a couple of dozen leads directly attributable to the campaign.

The advertising campaign is co-sponsored by the state commission, the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada in Reno, the Northern Nevada Development Authority based in Carson City and the Nevada Development Authority in Las Vegas.

While the future direction of the campaign was under discussion last week, Shriver said the hard-hitting approach appears to work.

"We're going to stay a little edgy," he said.

Historically, about 60 percent of the businesses relocating to Nevada have come from California, and Nevada continues to pound away on its themes that it's a lower-cost, business-friendlier place for companies.

But Shriver said the marketing campaigns need to be supported by longterm investments in Nevada and its ability to compete in the national economy.

The biggest single issue facing the Commission on Economic Development, he said, continues to be the quality of the state's workforce both in perception and reality.

While California companies tend to have an accurate understanding of Nevada's workforce, Shriver said companies farther east continue to see the state as one in which employment and lifestyles are dominated by gaming.

Along with the problems of perception, the commission's top executive said Nevada battles some real issues with the quality of its workforce, issues that are measured by statistics such as high school graduation rates.

(The Manhattan Institute reported this fall that 61 percent of Nevada students who enter high school earn a diploma; nationally, the average is 70 percent.) "Workforce quality always is an issue," Shriver said, noting that the commission works with colleges and universities and supports on-the-job training programs to improve the quality of the state's workers.

The state's heavy reliance on service industries gaming and tourism may in fact provide a competitive edge for Nevada as manufacturing is replaced by service as a cornerstone of the nation's economy, Shriver said.

Workers experienced in one service business a restaurant, for instance have learned important customer skills that can be transferred into developing service industries such as call centers.

Along with workforce quality, the commission works extensively with rural areas of the state to make sure communities are ready should new employers come knocking.

That work, Shriver said, often involves basic infrastructure sewer, roads and industrial parks as rural communities around the state sometimes prove attractive to companies moving operations from rural areas elsewhere in the nation.

Also important over the long term, he said, will be ongoing efforts to develop entrepreneurship and technologybased businesses.

That effort got a boost this summer with creation of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, an outgrowth of the Tech Alliance that worked to build a technologically based economy in northern Nevada.

The commission on economic development is a partner in the new center.