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churning in a community in terms of new business start-ups and <br /> existing business changes, the faster the community's rate of <br /> economic growth. In fact, of all of the indicators in this report, churn is <br /> the most strongly correlated with employment and income growth. <br /> This means that communities need to promote change and innovation, <br /> not retard it. <br /> A New Goal: Get Prosperous, Not Bigger <br /> As communities achieve low levels of unemployment in an era of fairly <br /> strong economic growth, economic developers need to think more <br /> about quality than quantity; more about getting prosperous than <br /> simply getting bigger (e.g., more jobs and people). Most economies, <br /> both big and small, still see getting bigger as the main goal of <br /> economic development. <br /> In the last 20 years, the transitional period between the old and the <br /> new economy, "getting big" made some sense because economic <br /> growth was slow and unemployment high. However, even when local <br /> and regional economies were weak, job growth was at best a means to <br /> two possible ends: raising the average standard of living in the <br /> metropolitan area, or helping reduce poverty by employing those at <br /> the fringes of the labor market. The first of these two goals is now <br /> more effectively achieved by focusing on income growth per se and <br /> not job growth as a means, particularly with the unemployment rate at <br /> around 5 percent. The second is now largely a matter of structural or <br /> social reform, such as job training, K-12 improvement, and solving the <br /> problem of spatial isolation in low-income, inner-city neighborhoods. It <br /> is difficult to see how programs aimed at undifferentiated job growth <br /> that are not focused on higher wages or higher-skill jobs can provide <br /> more opportunities for the poor than already exist in most metro <br />