Madison Aument
With 91.9 KVCR News, I'm Madison Aument. This is Economics IE, where we talk to experts from the Inland Empire to help take the temperature of the region's economic situation. Today I'm speaking to Paul Granillo, who's the president and CEO at the Inland Empire Economic Partnership. Why don't you first talk about the work that the Inland Empire Economic Partnership does?
Paul Granillo
Our economic partnership brings together the largest employers in Riverside and San Bernardino County, on the private and public side. And so our focus really is to make sure that in Washington and Sacramento, the voice of the 4.6 million residents of the Inland Empire is heard, and that we're also preparing our workforce for the future of work. And so we focused on policy, and we focus on jobs.
Madison Aument
And what is some of the policy work that IEEP is doing right now?
Paul Granillo
So it varies. Our policy council deals with issues that affect our region and our region's major sectors. And so we want to make sure that we have good policy that strengthens our employers ability to hire people and to make sure that they've got a strong economic foundation for our region.
Madison Aument
What is the Inland Empire economic partnership doing to bring more jobs to the region?
Paul Granillo
So we have a competitiveness committee that is really focused on the year 2045. And that's an important year for us as a reason because by that time, we will be in the top 10 of population for the United States. And as we go towards that number, we need to be attracting different sectors of the economy that aren't here right now. We need to let companies know about our size, we need to let them know that there are partners in education that they can work with to get the workforce that they need. And so that competitiveness committee is really laser focused on bringing companies and growing sectors of the economy that we don't have right now, but we're going to need in the future.
Madison Aument
Is part of that a response maybe to the logistics industry, moving sort of towards automation and a worry that maybe those jobs aren't going to exist forever?
Paul Granillo
Yeah, I think all of us need to look at automation and understand that it's going to, it is already changing our lives in ways that we might not see. But it's there. So I don't think we need to be afraid of automation, I think automation is going to make us as human beings
able to do things better and quicker. And I mean that in, in finding information, and in helping us to do manual tasks. So I think that there's going to be an upside to automation. I also believe that we are, because of the size of our logistics industry, uniquely situated to benefit from it, especially in the area of jobs. So we need to be training people now for the jobs that robotics, the jobs that artificial intelligence, virtual reality are going to make possible and we need to be really focused at the community college level about preparing people for those jobs in the future.
Madison Aument
That was Paul Granillo with the Inland Empire Economic Partnership. Join us again next Monday for Economics IE. You can find this segment on our website at kvcrnews.org/econie. Support for this segment comes from the Nowak family. For KVCR News, I'm Madison Aument.