The Altoona Planning Commission this week endorsed Blair County’s new comprehensive plan — a regional effort that applies to all six counties of the Southern Alleghenies.

That effort has produced an “attractive, easy-to-read and action-oriented” document, while the regional approach has saved money and allowed for a broader sharing and development of ideas, according to a prewritten endorsement, which the commission will forward to City Council.

The plan is scheduled for approval by the Blair County commissioners on July 31, according to county Planning Director Dave McFarland, who outlined the plan to the city Planning Commission.

One of the major trends that shaped the thinking of the steering committees is the “demographic disadvantage” of the region’s aging population, according to McFarland and an executive summary, available online at blairplanning.org.

That disadvantage has been caused mainly by outmigration of young people — often after going away to college.

“The small size of the region’s younger generations … has significant implications for labor markets, housing markets and the sustainability of critical services,” the summary states.

The median age in Blair County in 1950 was 32, McFarland said. Now it’s 42.

During the first 15 years of this century, the percentage of Blair County’s population over 55 moved from 10 to 27 percent, McFarland said.

During that same period, Blair County has lost 11 percent of its prime-age labor force — people between 25 and 54, he said.

While that’s far worse than the 3 percent for the state, it’s better than the 14 percent loss in that age group for Southern Alleghenies as a whole.

Furthermore, that loss of young workers is offset somewhat in Blair by the recent strong economic performance of the county, with the help of the Altoona-Blair County Development Corp., Penn State Altoona and local entrepreneurs, McFarland said.

The dearth of young workers is a reversal of what economic development officials formerly regarded as the problem: a simple lack of jobs, according to city Community Development Director Lee Slusser.

“We hear so often that the area needs more jobs,” Slusser said. “It actually needs more people.”

It needs both, according to the introduction of the proposed plan.

The problem developed because the area’s old lower-skilled jobs in manufacturing, energy and transportation have gone and won’t come back, but the younger people who could fill newer, plentiful, higher-skill jobs that are potentially available have also gone, according to the introduction.

And as baby boomers continue to retire, that problem will only be aggravated.

“(There will be) a shortage of electricians, nurses, plumbers, doctors, engineers, managers, farmers and a wide range of other skill sets that businesses, institutions and residents in the region rely on,” the introduction states. “These shortages are due in part to the decades of outmigration caused by previous economic ebbs and the thousands of people who don’t live here today because their parents or grandparents moved out in 1972, 1985 or more recently.”

The solution is a multi-pronged approach that will retain and attract both the companies that create the new kinds of jobs and “households that have choices,” according to the introduction.

This approach emphasizes eight “critical” areas, according to the plan: broadband and cellular service, collaboration and coordination, business and workforce development, housing and blight, recreational amenities and natural assets, agriculture, public health and safety, and transportation, according to the plan.

The plan calls for each county to focus on five of the eight areas.

For Blair County, the plan assigns only two of the regional priorities: broadband and cellular along with collaboration and coordination. Blair thus has three priorities of its own: agriculture; housing and blight; and public health and safety.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.