South By North Strategies, Ltd.

From The News & Observer’s story on the new “State of the Workforce” report issued by the N.C. Commission on Workforce Development …

The commission said that North Carolina’s economic future depends on public officials developing smart policies. Such policies include steering more students to get marketable skills in the sciences and expanding programs that provide midlife retraining for veteran workers displaced by layoffs.
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Much of this was laid out in the commission’s 2007 report, but the transformation has been intensified by the recession, the new report said.
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Indeed, legions of the displaced workers are not in obsolete blue-collar jobs but instead have been disgorged by the flagship employers in the intelligence-based economy. Companies like IBM, Nortel Networks, Tekelec, Sony Ericsson – and most recently, Cisco Systems – have collectively announced thousands of job cuts in the Triangle in the past few years, some staffing up in India and other parts of the world with cheaper labor and cheaper production.