AG 2011 12 19 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Draft 1.1 -- Not for Distribution or Circulation • Retail — The only retail gap to show up in INPLAN is supermarkets (35 direct jobs). • Tourism & Entertainment — The biggest gaps in the county are hotels (134 direct jobs), performing arts companies (92), amusement parks (29), sightseeing (22), and auto rental (21). • Information Services — The two biggest gaps in this sector are motion picture production (87 direct jobs) and telecommunications (77). • Education, Health, and Social Services — Cabarrus County has gaps in family services (90 direct jobs), physicians and dentists (55), home health care services (51), and community food services (38). • Personal Services — The top personal service gaps are private household operations (159 direct jobs), dry cleaning (37), religious organizations (31), and other personal services (27). From Possible to Plausible Job Opportunities Leakage analysis represents the job opportunities that are possible from local demand, but not all possible jobs are plausible or even desirable. The use of 25% to model a plausible shift, rather than 100% is a rough way to take these factors into account. But it's worth exploring, briefly, the challenges of creating any jobs in certain sectors. Historically, an area like Cabarrus depended heavily on its natural resources. The proximity of tobacco and cotton farmers led to the development of manufacturers focused on cigarettes and textiles. But as we have seen, most of these industries have moved overseas or just shut down. Very few of the job opportunities noted above are automatically contrained by natural resources. Some exceptions might be the following: • Local Food — In principle, not all crops can be grown in Cabarrus County, but the biggest job opportunities — in growing grains, nuts, and fruit — actually already have some activity already. As the economist Kenneth Boulding once noted, "Anything that exists is possible." "Commercial fishing," as noted earlier, is not possible, but aquaculture and aquaponics is. • Mining — Jobs in this sector, from mining or oil and gas drilling, are completely dependent on natural resources. The county, as noted, has granite deposits that it is currently mining, but further job expansion here seems unlikely. But under the 25% shift, only 37 jobs in this sector were regarded as possible. • Manufacturing — Some manufacturing jobs, like the processing of alumina from a bauxite mine, are very location dependent. None of the top job opportunities here fall into this category. 32 Attachment number 1 1 -4 Page 334