Rural Georgia has benefited disproportionately from a wave of unprecedented economic development across the state during the last four years, with more than three-quarters of projects going outside metro Atlanta.
But there’s a downside to the progress: With a statewide unemployment rate of just 3.2%, there aren’t enough workers to fill the 400,000 job openings expected in the next decade.
The small city of Thomasville in Southwest Georgia is doing something about it with an initiative launched in 2019 aimed at a lack of preparedness among students for holding good-paying jobs in today’s workforce and at barriers to work including inadequate child-care options, lack of transportation and a shortage of affordable housing.
The key to Imagine Thomasville has been local political, business, and education leaders connecting with each other rather than staying inside their respective silos, Shelley Zorn, president and CEO of the Thomasville Payroll Development Authority, said July 26 during the Georgia Chamber of Commerce’s annual Rural Prosperity Summit on the campus of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College.
“What I like about this is we weren’t creating a lot of new programs and services,” Zorn said. “It just helped being in a room and knowing what’s out there. … A lot of good work is going on because we coordinate with each other.”
Zorn’s organization partnered with the Thomasville & Thomas County Chamber of Commerce to start Imagine Thomasville four years ago only to be sidetracked by the pandemic. The work got underway in earnest in 2021 when the organizations hired the Atlanta-based Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education (GPEE) – a Georgia Chamber affiliate – to conduct a year-long survey of hundreds of local residents.
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