jobs

Cross posted from the White House blog:

Since the formation of the White House Rural Council in June 2011, we have had a unique opportunity to provide recommendations on how to grow the economy and create jobs in rural America.

The feedback we’re providing to the White House, based on our travels throughout the countryside, has helped us find creative ways to move the country forward without relying on Congress to act because rural Americans can’t wait.

Recently, in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, USDA Rural Development hosted a “Partners in Building Community Forum” in which the primary focus was to generate ideas that would promote job growth in Wisconsin. Over the past three years, USDA Rural Development has helped to create or save more than 1450 jobs in Southwestern Wisconsin alone.

The forum explored regional efforts and partnerships, in conjunction with USDA Rural Development’s assistance, that have contributed to economic development, job creation/sustainability, and the expansion of necessary community services, on a regional level, in Southwestern Wisconsin.

Last week, USDA Under Secretary Dallas Tonsager made a brief, but impactful visit to Oregon joining USDA Rural Development State Director Vicki Walker to announce program support and celebrate milestones in rural economic development with local communities.

Recently USDA Rural Development Administrator for Business and Cooperative Programs Judith Canales joined Small Business Administration (SBA) officials in Syracuse, New York, to discuss opportunities to promote rural small business investment and job creation.  The rural investment roundtable event was held at Dairylea Cooperative, Inc.

As part of the Startup America Initiative, SBA recently announced the creation of a $1 billion Impact Investment Fund through its Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) Program.  The Impact Fund will invest in distressed areas as well as in emerging sectors such as clean energy. SBA provides up to a 2 to1 match to private capital raised by this fund, partnering with private investors to target “impact” investments.

Last week, President Obama traveled to the small town of Osawatomie, Kansas, where President Teddy Roosevelt once called for building an America where everyone gets a fair chance, a square deal, and an equal opportunity to succeed.

One hundred years later, we are again at a make or break moment for the middle class.  At stake is a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure their retirement.

While people have squabbled over the direction of federal forest management, many landscapes have declined. Take southwestern ponderosa pine, for example. Where thick grasses once waved under big orange-barked pines, thickets of spindly trees now threaten natural and human communities alike through outbreaks of insects and disease, followed by devastating fires.

The market for local food – food that is produced, processed, distributed and sold within a specific region, say a radius of several hundred miles – is growing. Large, small and midsized farms are all tapping into it. Even better, new data suggest that these producers are employing more workers than they would be if they weren’t selling into local and regional markets.

A new white paper titled An Explanation of Green Jobs Policies, Theory, Measurement Approaches, and Job Growth Expectations was written by Iowa State University through a cooperative agreement with USDA’s Office of Energy Policy and New Uses.  The authors explore policy, theoretical foundations, and the approaches to measuring green jobs in the United States.  The paper contains brief descriptions of national and state initiatives to quantify green jobs, as well as their potential for growth.  The study finds there is little academic research that conceptualizes the green economy.  Regional research to assist state and local policy development is needed, along with evaluations investigating offsetting job losses.

There are currently twin public policy focuses regarding green jobs.  The first concerns imply value of the activity; namely, the ability to conserve energy and other natural resources as well as reduce pollution.  The second focus is the job producing value.  While most people agree that the environmentally beneficial goals of policy developments are essential, the job creation goals are foremost in most policymakers’ minds.

Recently, both houses of Congress took action to support tens-of-thousands of American jobs by ratifying trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, as well as passing trade adjustment assistance to help train workers for the 21st century economy.  And last week, the President signed them.

These agreements are a win for the American economy.  For American agriculture, their passage will mean over $2.3 billion in additional exports, supporting nearly 20,000 jobs here at home for folks who package, ship, and market agricultural products.

This past weekend, I traveled to Iowa to meet with local leaders about the urgent need to pass President Obama’s American Jobs Act. Just as in the other states I visited across the country this past month, the folks in Iowa said loud and clear that they are ready to see the economy flourish again and believe this Act will get us back to work.