Challenges and Opportunities in Advancing Equity in Georgia Manufacturing

Recent economic development policy in the United States has, in a break from previous decades, identified equity as an explicit goal. However, little is known about what novel challenges and opportunities face economic development programs and practitioners in attempting to advance equity. This paper reports results from a workshop engaging 48 managers and staff working on components of the Georgia Artificial Intelligence Manufacturing Project (Georgia AIM), a $65 million equity-focused regional economic development project funded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration and the Georgia state government. Participants discussed their understandings of economic participation and equity, potential obstacles and opportunities in achieving equity, and approaches to assessing equity outcomes. Results reveal diversity in understandings of equity in the manufacturing economy. Participants agree that widespread participation in manufacturing work partly constitutes manufacturing equity, but they exhibit more divergence about social, psychological, or environmental aspects of participation and equity. Meanwhile, participants identified a wide variety of both internal and external factors which will affect whether Georgia AIM achieves its equity goals. This report illustrates several tensions which equity-focused economic development projects will have to face—between promoting all or only some sorts of manufacturing jobs; between promoting benefits from manufacturing and reducing harms from manufacturing; and between achieving and assessing impact. Participants’ grounded perspectives on negotiating these tensions can provide guidance for future economic development projects.