Jobs Above Replacement: Womble Carlyle’s Mark Newberg Introduces Sabermetrics-Inspired Approach to Economic Development with the Huffington Post

During the past decade, sabermetrics—the science of advanced statistical analysis—has revolutionized how Major League Baseball organizations build their teams. Chief among these new statistics is WAR, or Wins Above Replacement, which calculates how many wins a player delivers to his team compared to a baseline replacement player.

Womble Carlyle Director of Impact Strategies Mark Newberg asks the question, “What if the same approach could be applied to economic development?” in the Huffington Post. Newberg theorizes that a statistical approach, which he calls the Jobs Above Replacement equation, could be a new, invaluable way to look at job creation.

In Newberg’s approach, economic development officials would calculate how many jobs a project would create, giving additional weight to jobs with good benefits and pay. Other factors, such as how fast the new jobs would be created, the cost per job and how many existing jobs a project saves, would be taken into account. Newberg says the project’s total job growth would need to be measured against a hypothetical baseline of how many jobs would be created if the region or company just remained on its current course.

Click here to read the full article in the Huffington Post.

Mark Newberg is Director of Impact Strategies for Womble Carlyle, where he is helping launch an Impact Economy practice and develop an integrated Impact Team that is dedicated to supporting the growth of businesses and entrepreneurs in the Impact Economy.  Newberg also serves as the Managing Director of Impact Investment Strategies for 5 Stone Green Capital.