Business Facilities - March 2008 - (Page 8)

BUSINESS REPORT California By Brian Donahue California Seeks Immigration Reform to Spur Economic Growth Leaders in business and government say that caps on visas are chasing away workers who are essential to the economic development of California—and the nation. C alifornia is facing a significant shortage of skilled professionals, a problem that many believe will limit the state’s economic growth in the coming decades. Researchers and leaders in the public and private sectors say the demand for knowledge-based employees already exceeds the supply, and that this gap will only widen over time. The state’s workforce has long had an increasingly high percentage of skilled employees in the areas of math, science, and engineering. California ranks 12th in the nation in the percentage of adults who are college graduates, according to the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), a private, nonprofit research organization. Its businesses have also relied heavily on foreign-born profesCALIFORNIA FAST FACTS Population (2006): 36,457,549 Largest Cities (2006): Los Angeles, 3,849,378; San Diego, 1,256,951; San Jose, 929,936; San Francisco, 744,041; Long Beach, 472,494 Targeted Industries: Health care, medical technologies, high technology, logistics, financial services, advanced manufacturing, nanotechnology, aerospace, environmental energy, and agricultural technology Key Incentives: Pollution Control Financing, Small Business Loan Guarantee, Local Agency Military Base Recovery Area, Net Operating Loss Carryover sionals. With these workers, Silicon Valley companies have become global leaders, and California has built a thriving knowledge-based economy that helps to fuel the nation’s overall economic growth. But a shortage of highly skilled workers poses a problem for the state, as it does for other parts of the nation. According to PPIC’s report, “California 2025: Taking on the Future,” 33% of California’s working-age adults will have a college degree in 2020, but 39% of jobs in the state will need college graduates. Projections show that by 2025, some 4.5 million new jobs will be created in California. On the whole, two out of every five jobs in the state will require a college graduate, up from less than one third in 2005. It is unlikely that college-educated workers from other states will be able to fill this need, according to the PPIC report, because the number of these workers moving to California would need to increase 75% in 20 years, from 4.78 million in 2005 to 8.33 million in 2025. For both government and business leaders, the answer to these problems lies not just in improving the education pipeline, but in federal immigration reform, which they say must be changed to allow more foreign-born, skilled workers to live in the United States. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and other state officials were disappointed last year when Congress rejected an immigration reform package that would have increased the annual cap on tempo- NUMBER OF FOREIGN COLLEGE GRADUATES MIGRATING TO CALIFORNIA 350 300 NUMBER OF MIGRANTS (THOUSANDS) 250 200 150 100 50 0 1965-1970 1975-1980 1985-1990 1995-2000 2000-2005 SOURCES: PUBLIC POLICY INSTITUTE OF CALIFORNIA’S CALCULATIONS USING DECENNIAL CENSUS DATA AND THE 2005 AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY. 8 MARCH 2008

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Business Facilities - March 2008 Contents First Word Snapshots California Seeks Immigration Reform To Spur Economic Growth Outside the Biotechnology Clusters Global Biotech Competition Heats Up Location Is Key To Your Bottom Line New Incentives For New Hampshire Metro Spotlight: Jersey City, NJ Europe's Center For Goods, Real and Virtual Access Your Markets From Pennsylvania Corporate Moves: Illinois Louisiana Upgrades Important Port Road Projects To Accelerate Michigan's Economy Corporate Moves: South Carolina Metro Spotlight: Salt Lake City, UT Advertiser Index Inside LiveXchange

Business Facilities - March 2008

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