By Christa Tinsley, Project Associate

The U.S. Department of Labor awarded $100 million in green jobs training grants to 25 communities earlier this month. Austin, Texas received $4.8 million of this money to train for and create 1,000 green energy jobs. A thousand jobs is a boost for a local workforce of any size, but $4.8 million is a pretty steep price. The real payoff occurs not when those initial thousand jobs are created but when that employment spurs a long-term cycle of job creation.

NPR’s Morning Edition began this year with a series called “New Jobs for a New Decade.” Where are these new jobs? Health care, technology, and alternative energy. Sound familiar? And a recent report published by Georgetown University states that 30 million new and replacement jobs will require some college or higher. Does that also sound familiar?

Most communities are on board with these ideas but when it comes to doing something now, their hands are tied – states have slashed Pre-K-12 and higher education budgets significantly for the coming year. States are cutting universities’ technology and bioscience research and development funding and STEM education programs. Meanwhile, most states are figuring out ways to cut taxes for businesses while struggling with bankrupt unemployment funds.This cycle reminds me of the old business adage, "You have to spend money to make money."

Getting jobs costs money (and it’s almost always taxpayer money). We’ve known this for a long time as states have pitted themselves against each other to attract footloose firms with generous incentives and tax packages. But losing them costs even more. And on what specifically should that job-making money be spent? There’s the immediate anxiety of countering the “jobless recovery” and the long-term work of developing a workforce that can keep up with the rapidly changing nature of jobs.

The challenge of holistic economic development is that there isn’t just one fix or one single program to do what really needs to be done. Since there are so many outcomes in a well-rounded strategy, there must be diverse goals and actions implemented by a wide range of partners in order to get us where we want to be. This goes beyond getting a grant or apportioning a budget, to less tangible elements like commitment, collaboration, and program evaluation. Our opportunities are not in one federal agency or one non-profit foundation, but in all the moving parts of a community who want to share in the successes of these “new jobs for a new decade.”