It's been a tumultuous four years for the Regional Jobs Initiative, the Fresno-based group that formed in 2003 with the goal of bringing new well-paying jobs, new job-training investments and a new sense of cooperation to economic development efforts in the Fresno region.
On Friday, the group's volunteer partners met to chart the group's course over its final year -- and to make the case for extending its partnerships past its five-year mandate.
The initiative's goal of 29,300 new jobs in Fresno and Madera counties, double the normal rate of job growth, across an array of industry "clusters" -- construction, health care, tourism, information processing, manufacturing, water technology and logistics and distribution -- almost certainly won't be reached by year's end.
At the end of 2007, the region had added 17,100 new jobs in those clusters -- about 7,100 in the tourism cluster, 3,200 in construction, 3,000 in health care, 2,100 in information processing, 900 in durable goods manufacturing and 800 in logistics and distribution, a term for freight transportation and warehousing.
Only tourism has outpaced the group's growth goals, with the rest of the categories falling behind. And job growth slowed last year, as the bursting of the real estate bubble and the mortgage and credit crisis put a crimp on the economy in the central San Joaquin Valley and across the country.
Still, said Ashley Swearengin, chief operating officer of the initiative, the region still saw job growth between 2003 and 2007 that outpaced that of the state as a whole -- and many of those jobs are sticking around.
Construction in particular, which drove job growth from 2003 to 2006, lost 2,500 jobs between 2006 and 2007, but the sector still employs 3,200 more people than it did in 2003, she said.
And while average unemployment rates in Fresno County rose from 8% in 2006 to 8.5% in 2007, that's still below the 11.5% annual rate in 2003 and the double-digit unemployment the region has suffered for the prior two decades, she said.
"Despite the slowdown, our economy seems to be absorbing these [new] jobs," Swearengin said. Now, with an economic recession increasingly likely, "we've got lots and lots of lessons learned on what it's going to take to complete this community transformation," she said.
Among the group's goals to seek funding for regional infrastructure needs and form new partnerships to address widespread poverty in the region, the need for enhanced job training stands out, she said.
Studies done by the Fresno County Workforce Investment Board show that thousands of job openings in the region are now going unfilled for lack of qualified applicants.
"We have a large number of good-paying, qualified jobs for which there are a lack of qualified workers," said Blake Konczal, director of the board.
Several of the initiative's efforts to help close that gap have borne fruit, among them the securing of $4 million in federal grants to help State Center and West Hills community college districts set up new job training programs in advanced manufacturing, food processing, logistics and nursing.
While industries like distribution or food processing aren't often thought of as high-tech professions, they increasingly need workers able to understand and maintain sensitive, high-tech equipment, said Bill Smittcamp, president and CEO of Wawona Frozen Foods in Clovis and co-chairman of RJI's food technology cluster.
"We're putting together training programs to help our employees, and new employees, bring themselves up" to the level of skills these new technologies demand, he said.
"Work force is the key," agreed Doug Reitz, project manager for Fresno-based Harris Construction Co. Inc. and co-chairman of the Regional Jobs Initiative's construction industry cluster. "Now is the best time for us to be planning for when we come out of this downturn" in the economy.
That training can take place at all educational levels, he said. For instance, the Center for Construction Excellence at Fresno State links college students with construction professionals to find job opportunities and keep abreast of the latest advances in the field.
The RJI's manufacturing cluster hasn't made as much progress on its plans for an Advanced Manufacturing Center at Fresno State, meant to provide similar services for manufacturers.
But it has won grant funding to study the needs of manufacturers in the region and has launched a Web site, Centralcalmfg.org, with resources for manufacturers, including a list of available training programs.
High-tech companies in the region are also growing, said Ian Duffield, chief operating officer of Fresno-based Decipher Inc. and head of the software group.
The group's software cluster has grown from a dozen to more than 80 companies, and two Fresno companies -- Decipher and Galaxy IT -- have received venture capital funding, he said.
"A lot of our [computer science] students think they have to go to Silicon Valley to get a job, and that's not just true," Duffield said.
The reporter can be reached at jeffstjohn@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6637.
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