Thursday, November 3, 2005

Knowledge economy could use jump-start
By The Daily News

Is Nova Scotia a smart province? The answer, according to NovaKnowledge’s annual report card, is: “Yes, but ...”
The report card evaluates the knowledge economy according to 10 criteria. It doesn’t give letter grades, like those environmental report cards that keep flunking us because of sulphur from our coal emissions. Instead, NovaKnowledge’s grade categories are: leading, lagging but improving, signs of turnaround and lagging and stuck.

Nova Scotia leads in one category: adoption of new technology. We’re lagging and stuck in attracting venture capital. We’re lagging but improving in four categories, and there are signs of turnaround in four. In terms of letter grades, our average is probably a C+.

There’s a half-empty, half-full feel to NovaKnowledge’s evaluation. The organization says the province’s knowledge economy is growing — but not very fast. Yet the report also gave us a qualified “lagging but improving” mark in employment growth — qualified because a large number of the new jobs are “dead-end.”

What is a “dead-end” job? Definitions vary, but most would agree that dead-end jobs are low-paying and offer little, if any, chance to advance. Yet sometimes people manage to use such jobs as stepping-stones to other opportunities.

If those opportunities do not exist here, people will seek them elsewhere. That’s common knowledge to job recruiters signing up Maritimers who want to cash in on Alberta’s economic boom.

The report gives Nova Scotia credit for education and training.

But its authors say companies are not innovating and investing quickly enough to accommodate the workforce the education system produces.
That’s one of the reasons many native-born Nova Scotians go elsewhere, and why immigrants leave after staying here only a few years.

We may not agree with all NovaKnowledge’s conclusions. But the organization has identified one of the reasons our economy lags.

Let’s stop lagging, and start leading.