How America can create jobs
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0958
If the US is going to mount a solid recovery in jobs coming out of its deep recession, much of the fuel will come from people like Valentin Gapontsev , a Russian immigrant with a thick accent, and the company he founded 10 years ago, says Mark Trumbull in the Christian Science Monitor .
IPG Photonics employs nearly 400 people making laser equipment that manufacturers use for drilling, cutting, and welding metal parts—everything from car roofs to jet-engine combustors.
“Our target within 10 years is to triple our business, minimum,” says Gapontsev.
Economists see firms like Gapontsev’s—young, innovative, hungry—as crucial to job creation. What IPG Photonics does will have to be replicated exponentially across the country in everything from online start-ups to spade-in-the-ground food operations if the US is to put people back to work and raise living standards, argues Trumbull.
More about the authors
Paul Guinnessy, pguinnes@aip.org
