Without a doubt, workforce development has become the clarion call of the newly named Mississippi Development Authority (MDA). "The last major overhaul of our economic development program came 12 years ago," says J.C. Burns, executive director of the MDA. "Things have changed drastically in the last 12 years. We recognized that we had to bring ourselves into line with what the market now demands. We also recognized from our studies that we have two Mississippi's. One is growing extremely fast and making the right decisions. The other is the rural area outside of the cities that is not experiencing this economic growth. We have made a concerted effort to make the programs we have address the higher paying technical areas of the economy."

Sherry Vance, director of communications for the MDA, says the state will now offer companies a $1,000 credit per job for research and development and up to 4 percent rebates on payroll taxes if they provide jobs at 125 percent of the average state salary. "We also have a jobs tax credit for companies transferring their national or regional headquarters," she says. "For those companies, we offer an additional $2,000 tax credit if they pay 200 percent of the state wage rate."

The purpose of these new job tax credits is to foster the development of a workforce that can meet the demanding needs of knowledge-intensive industries such as wireless telecommunications, polymer sciences, space research and super-computing.