For example, a decade ago manufacturing accounted for 19.6% of county employment, while today it accounts for only 16.9% with most of the decline in the automobile industry. At the same time, service sector employment has risen from 33.1% in 1988 to 40.2% in 1997.
Noting Oakland County's manufacturing firms represent high wage, high skills and high output jobs, researchers concluded that in many cases these jobs are better described as "high-tech" than anything else, something that previous studies have failed to recognize. When these high-tech manufacturing jobs are properly counted as high-tech, Oakland County boasts a high-tech workforce of 167,568 workers, which is the third-highest number among leading counties in the US, surpassing all but Santa Clara (Silicon Valley) and Middlesex (Route 128) counties.
Oakland County also has a more balanced distribution of high-tech workers, making it less vulnerable to a slowdown in one sector -- such as electronic equipment -- than Silicon Valley.
"The fact our employment is well balanced across a wide range of sectors makes a downturn in the auto industry less severe for the Oakland County economy than a comparable downturn in the computer industry would have on Silicon Valley, Route 128 or Research Triangle Park, which are three of the high-tech regions Automation Alley is competing against for skilled talent," Patterson says.
Other key findings in the Anderson Report were:
· Oakland County has a larger share of service sector employment and a smaller share of manufacturing than Santa Clara County.
· Oakland County's high-tech employment base is more stable than that of Silicon Valley, which has an enormous concentration of just one type of high-tech worker.
· Oakland County's ability to attract high-tech manufacturing firms, particularly those in the automotive industry, has greatly increased the county's high-tech employment.
A copy of the report is available at the Anderson Economic Group web site at http://www.AndersonEconomicGroup.com.
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