U.S. Southeast Cooks
Up New Labor Solutions

by TRACY HEATH

Low business costs, warm weather, good infrastructure and market access -- there's not much the U.S. Southeast hasn't been able to offer businesses. But nowadays, those sorts of assets are becoming far less important to expanding companies as the increasingly tight labor market and growing training requirements put a damper on growth opportunities. The question is: Can the Southeast step up to bat and knock those lobbing labor issues out of the ballpark?

Georgia's efforts in training and education reform have made the state a major location for high-tech workers like these employees of Scientific Atlanta.

Most definitely. Many of the Southeast states have taken great strides in developing the type of labor that today's industries need. "As a general rule, the Southeastern states offer some of the most aggressive state-funded employee recruitment and training programs for business in the country," says Mike Mullis of J. M. Mullis, a Memphis, Tenn.-based site-consulting firm. "And among those states some of the best in terms of training are Georgia and Tennessee, and Kentucky is improving its overall training system as well."

The emphasis on work-force development and education has been the turning point for labor issues in the Southeast. Although the Southeast has relatively tight labor markets, Mullis explains, there is some level of under-employment. As the Southeast continues to better train the under-employed and focus on education reform at the high school, two-year and college level, companies should be able to pull in qualified employees from the under-employed ranks and graduating classes.

The Southeast also appeals to the younger workers that so many high-tech companies are searching for these days. "The Southeast tends to attract companies who are looking for younger, skilled employees, who want the quality of life, that sunshine year round, that the region offers," says Richard Gatto, executive vice president with Chicago-based The Alter Group, a privately held developer. "Much of the growth in those markets is because of the population growth in the cities that's advancing continually, and the companies are following the labor trends. That's why in our mind you have the large multinational corporate names that we know as well as the more startup type companies or newer corporations going down there. They're all chasing the labor."

But without the emphasis on work-force development and training, Mullis explains, the Southeast could lose its competitive edge in the future. "The Southeast remains a very good place to do business, but the competition from across the United States is very keen," he adds. "Overall operating costs, with incentives, are becoming much more competitive across the United States. Therefore, the Southeast, as a whole, still requires better education systems to support today's industries' more complicated employee skill set needs."

So in order to maintain their magnetism as a business location, the Southeast states continue to move forward in the work-force development and education arenas. Here's a look at some of those states' labor solutions and some of the businesses that have found the Southeast's efforts just to their liking.