Being Fair to Middlin'

One of the reasons the small community where I now serve didn't have as hard of a slump as many in the state has been the presence of three facilities that offer blue-collar semi-skilled jobs, such as those for welders and other workers that require some training and preparation even if they don't need college degrees.

Jobs like these offer some of the best routes to economic mobility -- they may not be a way to get rich, but they offer a family a chance to help their children acquire education and degrees that can in turn be the keys to success for the motivated. So creating them is vital to economic growth.. Even though some critics knock places like Texas for touting job growth numbers by saying the majority of those new jobs are low-skill, low-income service industry work, like at a fast food restaurant, five of the eight metro areas which have more mid-skill jobs today than in 2007 are there. My own boring old Oklahoma City is number five on the list.

Communities that don't find ways to increase these kinds of jobs or which emphasize amenities for the well-heeled wind up with a sort of two-tiered system with a lot of poor people employed in retail and service industries, a few wealthy people in finance, business and information services, and a wide gap in between. Modern Detroit offers a good example of the endpoint of that kind of setup, and Chicago a good view of that process while it's under way.