Need a Job? Move to Iowa!

Great story in the NYTimes today that bubbled up to me on Twitter via the #dmtweetup crew. This time last year I wrote a post here asking “Where are all the cool jobs?“. In it I wrote of the “brain drain” that Iowa faces as its smart, young, talented workforce jump ship to head to the “cool” cities. Well this brain drain, among other reasones, has created a SURPLUS (you read it right) of jobs for skilled, knowledge workers in Iowa … even in a recession. The market has completely flipped to where employers are scrambling to attract the young, smart, and talented and giving incentives for “cool jobs”.

As Iowa Job Surplus Grows, Workers Call the Shots – NYTimes.com

“As rising unemployment and layoffs beset workers around the country, Iowa faces a different problem: a surplus of jobs. Or to put it another way: a shortage of workers. A survey of companies by Iowa Workforce Development, a state agency, found as many as 48,000 job vacancies, in industries including financial services — Des Moines trails only Hartford as the nation’s insurance capital — health care and skilled manufacturing. One estimate projects the job surplus to reach 198,000 by 2014, with vacancies increasingly in professional positions. Greater Des Moines alone faces a shortfall of 60,000 workers in the next decade.

The state provides a small, advance view of what some economists predict will be a broader shortage of skilled workers in the next 20 or 30 years, as tens of millions of baby boomers retire from the workplace, and the economy produces more new jobs than workers. Potential consequences include slower economic growth and competitiveness, as well as higher wages for skilled workers and greater inequality”

Don’t worry – once you get here you will find Iowa has a lot of cool tech people and saavy business minds.

Technorati Tags: iowa, business, des moines

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