Greenspan urges education and job training to address global job loss worries

Friday, March 12th 2004, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Friday it is critical for the country to supply adequate education and job training to all citizens in order to bolster eroding support for global trade.

Speaking to a finance conference sponsored by Boston College, Greenspan delivered his latest plea to the country not to turn its back on the global economy, arguing that it would be a mistake to try to preserve U.S. jobs in threatened industries by erecting protectionist barrierss.

``Time and again through our history, we have discovered that attempting merely to preserve the comfortable features of the present, rather than reaching for new levels of prosperity, is a sure path to stagnation,'' Greenspan said in remarks that were released in Washington.

Greenspan said the current anxiety over losing jobs to foreign competition was entirely understandable given the current weak labor market, where some 2 million unemployed have been unable to find new jobs for more than six months.

Greenspan said that new job creation is ``lagging badly,'' even though the economy has been pulling out of the 2001 recession for the past two years, because companies have stressed improving productivity, the ability to produce more with fewer workers.

But as he did in a congressional appearance on Thursday, Greenspan said job growth should soon pick up as businesses reach the limit on boosting output through productivity gains and start rehiring laid off workers.

``We have reason to be confident that new jobs will displace the old ones as they always have, but America's job turnover process will never be without pain for those caught on the downside,'' Greenspan said.

As he did in his appearance before the House Education and Workforce Committee on Thursday, Greenspan urged the country to place heavy emphasis on making sure that all students had the chance for a ``rigorous education'' and for opportunities to acquire new skills in adulthood.

He said that the nation's community colleges offered one of the best ways to make that happen.

Greenspan said placing an emphasis on education would solve current shortages in the number of skilled workers, who are in high demand, by providing training to low-skilled workers who are having trouble finding jobs.

To address this problem, Greenspan said the country needed to be ``foward-looking in order to adapt our educational system to the evolving needs of the economy and the realities of our changing society.''