He took his present position last fall after serving as head of the counterpart agency in Kansas, so recent experience gives him a take on the economies of both states that few people possess. And from where he sits, the solution to cracking the nut of joblessness in this region isn’t going to come from his department or anywhere else in Jefferson City or Topeka—or Washington, for that matter. This is one we’re going to have to solve ourselves, and at this point in the cycle of regional business, it’s more a psychological barrier than an economic one.

With key statistical measures declaring that the Great Recession of 2008–2009 is officially over, moving forward from here, as Kerr says, “is a matter of consumer confidence.”

“People feel better today than they did six months ago,” he says, “but until you’re sure you’re not going to be the next guy tapped on the shoulder and given the pink slip, you’re going to keep your wallet in your pocket.”

That, he said, means that purchases of everything from refrigerators to cars won’t really begin to take off—or begin to chip away at the nation’s jobless rate—until people feel secure. The rate will come down, Kerr said, “when consumers feel good about their jobs, when businesses feel good about their sales, and when access to capital is restored so that businesses can start growing and expanding again.”

Work-force development professionals say it will take a combination of factors to get the nation back closer to full employment: A surge in hiring from small business, which has always been the engine of job creation; a work force with more people who understand and embrace the need to be flexible, and who keep their skills sharpened as economic trends demand; and an updated approach to worker retraining that reflects the rapidly changing nature of business and industry.

When the final quarter of 2009 brought double-digit unemployment back to the U.S. for the first time since 1983, it ended a run of what had been, by historical standards, the best employment picture in decades.

Before it really took off in late 2007, joblessness had been so low for so long that many Americans either don’t remember or haven’t experienced such high unemployment levels. As fondly as we recall the relative boom times of unemployment below 4 percent in the 1990s, it’s worth noting that the nation’s jobless rate didn’t once tick below 5 percent between December 1973 and May 1996—nearly a quarter-century.

The question many of us have now is, do we have what it takes to get back to those low levels again?

SOME NEW APPROACHES

Clyde McQueen thinks so, but says it will take some doing. As director of the Full Employment Council, he has a backstage pass to the drama playing out with regional employment. The non-profit council has been trying to address some of the hiring dilemma locally through a combination of new approaches that encourage employers to hire—subsidizing the training costs of relocated workers, for example, or working to implement training programs that break traditional patterns.

“We need more on-demand training, using experts from the field, as opposed to the institutional instructional staff in spring-and-fall semester systems,” McQueen said. “It has to be market-based training to get people to move from one skill set into another in a competitive, 21st-century economy.”

One of the biggest keys to attacking double-digit unemployment, he said, would be a more effective strategy to get federal funding into the hands of smaller businesses. Too many dollars from last year’s stimulus package found their way to established businesses, he said, not to the newer, smaller and potentially more innovative companies that always lead the way in job creation.

“I think we need a reallocation of resources, a better understanding of who historically has made the highest employment impact, and that’s the small business owner,” McQueen said. He noted that the federal government has no shortage of programs designed to assist small businesses through subsidized and guaranteed loans, set-aside programs and contract awards. Rather than generating new initiatives to combat joblessness, he said, we need to make sure that programs already
in place are being fully used.

He also believes there’s a need for a more comprehensive approach to putting people back to work. Various business sectors, he said, will have to work together, with government input, to address the jobless situation as a whole, rather than from their individual perspectives.

“You’ve got to pull a lot of levers in this recession, compared to what we did before” in other downturns because this one was so much more severe and broad-based, McQueen said. “From a public policy standpoint, we’re not used to seeing all of these things—the lending piece, the real estate piece, the tra-ining piece—and how they interlock.”

AT THE WORKER'S LEVEL

And like Kerr, McQueen believes that one of the biggest impediments to hiring now is the inability of firms to qualify for traditional bank financing because lending standards have been markedly tightened in the wake of the residential housing meltdown.

Darcy McGrath, dean of work force instruction at Johnson County Community College, noted that in January, online classified advertising in the region had jumped by more than 25 percent from the same month last year. That’s a strong indicator that regional unemployment could soon be coming down.

That makes this time ideal, she said, for those workers displaced during the recession to take stock of where they want to be in the new hiring environment, and to do something about it. When hiring does begin, she believes, it could come in a sudden rush, so being prepared will be a key—not only for people seeking work, but for businesses that will need to make the right hires before the labor market begins to tighten.

“When you look at Sprint with about 2,000 IT layoffs, there are not necessarily the jobs in the Kansas City market to absorb that number of workers,” McGrath said. “So do they wait until the economy rebounds and those jobs are more in demand again, because they will be, eventually? Or do they look at other industries that need workers now, and change the education and competencies they have now to qualify for those?”

She also believes that we’re on the cusp of a sea change with work-force attitudes as Baby Boomers continue their 18-year trek out of the work force. “The person who thinks he’ll get a job at a company and be there for the rest of his life, that is a generational thing; Boomers are the last group to really expect that,” McGrath said.

“I’ve talked with colleagues in their 30s and 20s, and they don’t expect that to ever happen,” she said. “They do feel the need to be ready to transfer their skills to a different industry. And because they have that mind set that they could get the pink slip any day, they are ready to go: “What are my options? What do I need to do in a new job or occupation, and what skills do I need to tweak or do in a different way?”

TIME TO THINK SMALL

There’s no magic-bullet solution to the fix we’re in with employment, but if we keep our focus on what makes the American economy the world’s leader, there is a way back, says Jeff Kaczmarek, director of Kansas City’s Economic Development Corporation.

“Clearly, the issue is demand driven—or lack of demand,” he says. “In the case of small businesses, our clients are clearly telling us that the lack of capital, or lack of access to it, is a big problem. And many are businesses that have had successful track records and are longtime customers of banks. And the banks, under regulatory pressure, have raised the hurdle on accessing credit. In that environment, it’s very difficult to capitalize on the opportunities that are out there.”

So if he were king of the world, what would he do? Throwing cash at it, as the federal response has been, will provide some measure of success, he noted. But longer-term, the key is stimulating demand—and history shows that neither the government nor the big companies are going to get that done.

“There is a role for government,” Kaczmarek said, “but I’ve always felt that capital expenditures for infrastructure, with a long-term benefit to communities, is critical. I would focus on those hard, tangible assets that have long-term benefit: roads, water, high-speed rail, power generation, those make all the sense in the world.”

As does opening up avenues for innovation, he said.

“At the end of day, it’s all about demand and how to stimulate the economy in a way that doesn’t re-inflate bubbles, and is sustainable. With the unemployment rate we have now, only business can provide the solutions to hiring and product development that’s necessary. I strongly feel that we’ve got to empower the entrepreneurial sector of the economy. Ultimately, it will be small businesses that generate new ideas and innovation, and the products and services that will get us out of this.

“We’ve got to reward technology and innovation, to unfetter and release the innate power of creativity that is out there.”