An Analysis of Selected Start-up Industry Training Programs as Vehicles for Human Resources Development

The "start-up" industry training concept has received considerable attention as a way to better match workers and jobs, to leapfrog'' the industrial development process by attracting higher-wage industry to an area through upgrading local work forces, and to make it possible to increase the wages of low-income workers. This study examines in detail the programs of South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Alabama and their effect on industrial relocation trends and the leapfrogging of the unemployed and underemployed into the labor force. The results of the regression analysis and cluster analysis did not support the hypothesis that training programs had influenced industrial location. They constantly showed that counties which pre-program wise, had favorable employment, high education, population, and industrialization, continued to have them, while those that did not continued to do without.