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High-tech sector growing fast -Even with 1,000 new jobs, state still ranks 50th.

The good news is Montana’s high-tech sector is growing faster than any other state’s, adding more than 1,000 jobs in 2001,
according to Cyberstates 2002, a study conducted by the American Electronic Association.

By Christina Quinn, IR Business Writer

The bad news is, even with the extra employment, Montana ranks 50th, ahead of only Alaska and Wyoming, in number of high-tech
workers when Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. are included in the study. About 7,400 Montanans produce high-tech products, a 17
percent growth from the previous year, according to the report.

“It’s kind of a good-news, bad-news thing. The good news is that we added 1,000 jobs but the bad news is we were able to have
such a big percent increase,” said Dave Gibson, the state’s chief economic advisor. “We need to build that base, so, when we add
1,000 jobs, we have a 3 percent growth not 17 percent.”

The study is based on jobs that produce high-tech products such as airplane parts for Summit Design and Manufacturing or
long-distance telephone service for Touch America, according to Dennis Sienko, executive director of the American Electronic
Association-Midwest Council.

The growth in this industry should be encouraging to Montanans, Sienko said. In Montana, these jobs pay $36,800 a year as
opposed to Montana’s average pay of $23,000, he said. The jobs also tend to be export-based; thus workers produce a product, sell
it out of state and bring new money to Montana. High-tech products make up about 4 percent of Montana’s exports, according to
Sienko.

“The trend (in Montana) is definitely in the direction of getting more and more of these companies and these kinds of jobs,” Sienko
said. “I think we’re just on the cusp of where quality of life plays a role in where you are going to be.”

From 1995 to 2001, Montana’s tech-producing sector grew 110 percent from 3,513 jobs. Nationally, these jobs increased by 40
percent.
The national growth slowed, however, to 1 percent in 2001 when 20 states lost jobs in the high-tech industry.
The study did not include government, finance or education workers, or dot.com jobs. The numbers are based on government
statistics.

“The bottom line is we need to grow a lot of sectors in Montana,” Gibson said. “We’re always in the bottom third when it comes to
ways of measuring the economy, and that’s got to change.”

Reporter Christina Quinn can be reached at 447-4075 or e-mailed at [email protected].

http://www.helenair.com/business/3E1.html

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