Shannon NickinsonMore than once over the six months I have spent reporting material for what became the Pensacola Metro Report, I’ve been asked what I thought the bottom line was from the report.
The bottom line is that we have to do better.
Back in 2001, I was part of the team that worked with the University of West Florida’s Haas Center for Business Research and Economic Development to look at how Escambia and Santa Rosa counties had changed demographically, economically and educationally since the 1970s.
As manufacturing jobs — the gateway to the middle class for many folks — began to fade, we felt that.
As earnings from labor declined, we felt that.
As the Base Realignment and Closure process shrunk the footprint of civilian jobs at local military bases, we felt that.
And it stung.
Now 13 years later, I am part of the team updating the findings from 2001. We are still working with Dr. Rick Harper, now director of the Studer Institute, head of the UWF Office of Economic Development and Engagement, and fresh off of a two-year special assignment as economic adviser to the Florida Senate.
We’ve gained back some of the ground we lost in wages. But not all of it. And certainly not as much as Fort Walton Beach, our Panhandle neighbors to the east.
The source of our income has changed, too. Where we once got more of our income from labor, now we get more of it from transfer payments from the government. The jobs we have retained and grown are typically in the service industry.
Five of the top 10 kinds of jobs we are predicted to see more of by 2020 are service-related, with an average hourly wage of $10.80. They require short-term, on-the-job training or some non-degree-level postsecondary training.
We have 11 percent as many software developers as we would have if our job market matched the national market. And 21 percent of the information security analysts.
If you lined up 10 Escambia County schoolchildren, chances are six of them qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.
About 20 percent of the 5-year-olds in the Escambia-Santa Rosa area lack the skills needed to be ready for kindergarten.
We are diabetic, overweight and smoke at higher rates than our peers in the state.
That, friends, is not good business.
But I found something else that is important to note.
We are more than our numbers. We can find ways to make it work, to change the outcome.
Mike Thorpe did it at Milton High School, leading a team that took that school from a D to an A. In a school where half of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch.
The graduation rate at Milton High is 82.7 percent, nearly 3 points better than the Santa Rosa County average.
We can build technology companies, the kind that offer high-wage jobs based on intellectual capital. The Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition does it. The institute, whose work on robotics has earned it a national profile in the field, has spun off its first company, Robotics Unlimited. That company has developed a robot that can run on the ground on two legs at 20 mph for two hours.
AppRiver started with a handful of employees and employs more than 200, with a headquarters in Gulf Breeze and offices in Switzerland, Atlanta and Austin.
We haven’t had the large-scale success that Mobile, Ala., has had in drawing manufacturing companies, but we are poised to exploit a niche market related to offshore oil and gas work that is bringing jobs into the community and investment into the Port of Pensacola, something you sure couldn’t have said 10 years ago.
Which means that we can do it. We can do better.
We can improve this community. We can take the advantages that we do have — our beautiful natural and historical resources to draw visitors, our proximity to a growing offshore exploration industry, our lack of state income tax — and work them.
We can teach poor kids. It takes more effort and a different level of focus, but it can be done. And we don’t have to go across the country to see how it’s done.
We can build an economy, an education system and a quality of life that allows for people at all stages of life to learn the skills they need to find meaningful work.
We have the tools. We just need to use them, without worrying about who gets credit for it at the polls, or whose side of the political boundary it comes from.
NOTE: You can read the Pensacola Metro Report at www.studerinstitute.com
Shannon Nickinson is the editor of www.progresspromise.com, a news and commentary website based in Pensacola. Follow her on Twitter @snickinson. Her column appears courtesy of ContextFlorida.
