Georgia Leads U.S. as State with Most Value -Added Output

A recent study conducted by Cleveland State University claims each of Georgia's aerospace jobs provide $135,000 in "value-added output per employee," thereby highlighting the operating efficiency of the state's aerospace industry and marking it a national leader.

For years, the nation's Governors have been crossing the globe, seeking to attract highpaying aerospace jobs by luring big-brand, major original equipment manufacturers to set up shop within their borders.

A 2002 presidential commission on the future of the U.S. aerospace industry showed that aerospace jobs pay as much as 40% more than other manufacturing sectors, making them one of the highest-paying jobs in America. The Cleveland State University study, commissioned by the Ohio Aerospace and Defense Advisory Council to demonstrate the value of aerospace jobs to the Ohio economy, compared 11 states that have significant aerospace and defense manufacturing. While Georgia is often ranked by such studies at eighth in the U.S. in terms of total employment, Georgia was actually number one in the U.S. in a critical measure of productivity: Value-Added Output per Employee. At first, one assumes that's because Georgia has a reputation for being a low-wage state; this value-added measure encompasses a number of factors beyond wages, particularly in the aerospace industry.

The per-unit amount of capital investment, machinery and equipment needed to make or fix airplanes is roughly the same state-to-state.

Georgia's advantage appears to be the high quality of workforce training and technical competence needed to make capital investments pay production dividends. The state's technical college system is a leader among public institutions worldwide. Five state-funded schools offer FAA-certified training in structures, power-plant, and avionics. In an age when wealth creation is more dependent on human capital input relative to machinery or raw materials, Georgia's ongoing investments in the aerospace workforce have become huge discriminators, even more valuable than cash incentives that might be offered to lure a company to produce aircraft parts.

Another factor contributing to value-added output per employee is the market value of the finished product. Savannah-based Gulfstream has chosen to compete on reliability and customer support, not just by price. The company's long-range, large-cabin products are more expensive than their closest competitors' products, but their system supportability and availability are legendary to owners.

The state's Center of Innovation for Aerospace was established in 2003 as part of a new economic growth strategy for Georgia that targets development assistance to grow six strategic industries, including agribusiness, life sciences, energy, logistics, and advanced manufacturing. With each of the centers colocated with university research facilities and run by leading subject-matter experts, Georgia is pushing industry-centric innovation, as compared to traditional land-tract incentives, to enable growth.

The Georgia Institute of Technology's Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering was ranked the #2 aerospace engineering program in the nation in the 2007 edition of "America's Best Colleges" by U.S. News and World Report. The Center of Innovation for Aerospace now directs its attention to attracting companies and assisting start-ups that do cutting-edge "first-of-a-kind" engineering work in defense and aerospace, such that graduates from the internationallyranked school can find exciting system-level work in Georgia.

Likewise, the Center leads implementation of the state's first Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the U.S. Air Force Base at Warner Robins, GA. While the mammoth air base employs 21,000 as one of the Air Force's three Air Logistics Centers, it manages global sustainment and engineering for many cutting-edge weapons systems totaling $5 billion of contract actions per year.

As the state continues to focus economic development and research support to the aerospace industry, it intends to grow more technologically-rich sub-sectors such as RF and aircraft interior systems that can support its existing market leaders.