Bismarck needs to attract more workers to attract more businesses, a committee says.

The workforce shortage is not an extraordinarily new problem to the city, which has boasted unemployment levels below the national average for years.

But the situation has become more dire in the past three to four years, said Dan Schumacher with Job Service North Dakota, a member of the Bismarck Mandan Development Association's recently-formed Workforce Development Committee.

The committee has two missions:consistent, brand-centric marketing of the area and adding incentives to help attract workers.

Tapping into the unemployed workforce in other cities is one of several steps the committee wants to take in bringing workers to the state.

BMDAand other state economic development organizations recently attended a job fair in Grand Rapids, Mich., where unemployment is high and the job market is tight. The goal was two-fold: to give attendees a taste of North Dakota and to recruit for positions. The response was overwhelming, participants said, and BMDA is coordinating with the state Department of Commerce to keep tabs on interested workers.

But image and incentives are key, said Steve Herman, chair of the committee, who said most workers had never thought about looking for jobs in North Dakota.

For example, Herman said, a postcard depicting a long stretch of empty highway and open fields, with the saying "North Dakota: This is our rush hour,"is a negative representation of what the state has to offer.

That's part of what keeps people away, Herman said at a Wednesday news conference.

"We're trying to overcome some of those myths out there about who we are and what we represent,"said Schumacher.

There have been other efforts to ease the workforce shortage, which, in Bismarck, is primarily in the service and technical industries. Job Service North Dakota reported more than 1,700 total job openings in the Bismarck-Mandan area.

But a lot of the focus has been on bringing former North Dakotans back; Herman said that's a difficult task and those workers tend to look for higher-paying jobs, which aren't as readily-available as the lower-wage jobs in the area.

Without a larger labor force, Herman said, businesses are turning down the opportunity to build or expand in the area, such as Vestas, a wind turbine manufacturer that picked a Colorado city over Bismarck to build a new plant. Vestas didn't believe the area had the labor.

"They were looking at 500 workers,"Schumacher said. "They did not have the confidence that we would be able to provide them with 500 workers, even over a period of one and a half to two years."

Herman said the city could consider offering incentive programs to bring in workers, much like the city created a fund in the '80s to entice businesses to build bases in the area. Suggestions include getting a fund together that could help workers buy down mortgages in other states to ease the move to Bismarck-Mandan, or to help with other relocation costs.

"We need to remove the objections"to moving, he said.

The unemployed in other cities and states that have been more affected by the financial crisis can be tapped and brought in, he added.

The committee will move forward and present ideas and proposals to the city and other groups; Herman said they plan to make it a very transparent process, hoping the community will support the campaign to bring in more workers.

(Reach reporter Crystal R. Reid at 250-8261 or crystal.reid@;bismarcktribune.com.)