[11/21/03]Mississippi has lost manufacturing jobs and is not likely to get any of them back until changes are made in the way things, particularly education, are done, state economist Dr. Phil Pepper told the Vicksburg Rotary Club Thursday.

Mississippi, he said, is in one of the regions of the United States with slow economic growth. The state is predicted to have growth in employment of about 1 percent per year from 2003 to 2008, which is also among the lowest of the 15 Southern states.

“In the past three decades, manufacturing has been the No. 1 employer in Mississippi. In 1998, services passed manufacturing … in 1999, wholesale and retail sales passed manufacturing. And in 2000, government employment passed manufacturing, making manufacturing fourth in terms of the sector with the largest employment,” he said.

In Mississippi, he said the trend toward manufacturing began in the 1950s with the Balance Agriculture with Industry program. Employers who came, he said, were attracted because there were people here who would take low-paying jobs that required only minimal skills.

Today, many manufacturing jobs Mississippi has lost are still following cheap labor, Pepper said.

“Just like Mississippi stole a lot of jobs from the northern states back in the ’60s and ’70s, the other countries with lower wages are now taking the jobs from Mississippi,” he said.

Pepper said he does not believe Mississippi can reverse the trend without offering a better-educated employee pool. Many of Mississippi’s people have never graduated from high school and do not see the value of education, he said. The solution, he said, is that people have to raise their expectations for themselves and for their children.