With its horse-drawn buggies and pastoral settings, Lancaster County seems a low-tech kind of place.

And economically, it is. Manufacturing, construction, warehousing and transportation dominate the local economy, which has been buoyed over the years by a strong work ethic and a willingness to work for comparatively low wages.

But Dr. Antonio Callari worries that what once made us strong now makes us vulnerable.

Callari is a professor of economics and head of the Local Economy Center at Franklin & Marshall College, which releases its fourth annual "Lancaster Economy Report," available on the center's Web site today.

In it, Callari and a team of researchers analyze federal, state and local data to paint a portrait of a county stung but resilient in the face of the "Great Recession."

But — paraphrasing noted economist Yogi Berra — the report notes that the future of the local economy ain't what it used to be.

The report asserts that Lancaster County is poorly positioned to transition to a "knowledge-based" economy. High-tech jobs are relatively scarce here, perhaps in part because of the county's comparative lack of educational attainment.

Worse, according to the report, there appears to be an "inertia" stemming from the fact that "The culture in Lancaster ... has not been one of valuing knowledge and education as much as it has been one of valuing hard work and household frugality."

Not everyone agrees with this assessment. "There's a tortoise-and-hare argument," said David Nikoloff, CEO of the Economic Development Co. of Lancaster County. The pillars of the local economy "may not be sexy, but are they less sustainable than high tech?

"Is our share [of high-tech jobs] small? Absolutely. Can we do a better job of attracting those jobs? Unquestionably.

"But would I trade the Lancaster economy for Pittsburgh, which has done a far better job creating 'knowledge' jobs than we have? I wouldn't."

Still better
The recession notwithstanding, Lancaster County remains in better shape than other communities across the state and region, according to the report.

The cost of doing business is lower than in the state or the region, also (defined in the report as including Berks, Lebanon, York, Dauphin, Perry and Cumberland counties). The percentage of people receiving food stamps is lower, though it has risen from roughly 6 percent to 9 percent here. Debt loads are lower, credit scores are significantly higher than the state or region.

But the numbers aren't all this reassuring.

Per capita income here lags regional and state figures. The average weekly wage here in 2008 was $733 — compared to the regional figure of $759 and the state figure of $853.

Even the local unemployment rate, long seen as an indicator of relative strength, may be misleading.

It was reported last week that the unemployment rate climbed to 8.3 percent in February, the highest figure in 27 years. Still, the county had the fifth-best rate in the state, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry, well below the state average of 8.9 percent and national average of 9.7 percent.

Yet the Local Economy Report notes that the county's labor force participation rate — the percentage of working-age persons who are either employed or unemployed, but looking for a job — actually fell at a slightly greater rate than in the region, and a significantly greater rate than the state and the nation.

Callari said this suggests that people here are simply giving up on finding a job at a faster rate than in neighboring communities.

But the key concern to the authors of the report — which in addition to Callari include Seachrist Public Entrepreneurship undergraduate senior fellows Kelly Farrelly, Christine Cheah, Patrick Steigler, Alejandro Alfaro Aco and Matthew Flynn, along with project specialist Evan Gentry — is the type of jobs that aren't available here.

"First, the jobs in Lancaster are not the types of high technology and knowledge intensive jobs that are characteristic of sustainable economic prosperity," the report asserts. "Second, the level of educational attainment in Lancaster remains too low to generate hope for a more knowledge-driven economic engine."

Even when the presence of Amish and other Plain sects are accounted for, the researchers write, the county has a an "unacceptably high" level of non-high school graduates: 18.7 percent of those 25 years or older here, versus 15.3 percent in the region and 13.2 percent in the state.

The comparative underfunding of local libraries ($17.80 per capita here in 2007, the latest year for which figures are available, compared to $20.52 in the region and $27.33 in the state) suggests that the county simply doesn't value education to the extent it must to build a "first-class knowledge infrastructure" — and attract the type of employers that would take advantage of it.

Nikoloff, of the EDC, notes that this infrastructure is being constructed slowly. He points to the former Armstrong World Industries site that is being developed by F&M and Lancaster General Health. A medical college, among other things, is planned for the site, "and that will help those two institutions grow knowledge-based jobs."

He also cited GlaxoSmithKline's $300 million vaccine plant in Marietta; along with F&M and LGH, "they are making significant knowledge-based job investments, or just beginning to."

Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing is one of nine production jobs cited by the Milken Institute, an independent economic think tank, as key to the high-tech economy. Others include the manufacturing of commercial and service industry machinery, computer and peripheral equipment, audio and video equipment, semiconductor and other electronic components, aerospace products and parts, and the manufacture and reproduction of magnetic and optical media.

Service jobs cited by the Milken Institute include software publishers, motion picture and video industries, telecommunications, Internet service providers, computer systems design and medical and diagnostic laboratories, among others.

Lancaster County, notes Callari, has some of these jobs. "I don't think Lancaster County could or should fit this box precisely," he said in an e-mail.

Scott Sheely, executive director of the Lancaster County Workforce Investment Board, agrees: Lancaster County is not Silicon Valley.

But, said Sheely, it doesn't need to be.

"In our rush to think about whether there are high-tech jobs here, people forget about how technology gets applied at the local level," Sheely said. "A machinist these days isn't just a guy who runs a machine that cuts metal; he runs a computer" that operates the machine.

"So OK, we don't do labs, we don't have people doing high-end nanotechnology, but you can't think of going into any manufacturing job without knowing the decimal system; the construction industry uses GPS and lasers."

Sheely cited a report by the Brookings Institute's Metropolitan Policy Program that listed Lancaster County as having one of the highest concentrations of "middle-wage jobs" — "good-paying jobs for less-educated workers," those without a bachelor's degree — in the nation. And while Sheely acknowledged that high-tech jobs must be an important part of the local economic mix, "we still have a lot of opportunity for 'gold-collar' jobs" — positions that require a high level of skill, but not necessarily a bachelor's degree.

The Brookings report, issued last June, notes that the focus in many communities across the country is high-tech jobs, but only about 30 percent of the American adult labor force has at least a bachelor's degree — and economic development efforts must focus on the availability of good jobs for these workers.

Still, Callari worries that local officials aren't worried enough about paving the way for more tech jobs here. "A good deal of the economic prosperity Lancastrians experienced in the past was based on a workforce employers found attractive for its hardworking habits and lower wage expectations," his report states. Too many local officials are of the mind that "we've always done it this way" to "move to a new culture of smart work and higher wages."

"There is nothing wrong with people getting specific skills out of education," Callari wrote in an e-mail. "But what they have to get out of education, for it to be an investment in human capital, is an appreciation of education per se, an ability and desire to learn, to be creative.

"That is the type of education that creates communities that can prosper."