But thanks to the information technology revolution, they have laptop computers and other tools that help them expand their knowledge in ways that we could barely imagine during my college days. No community college in the country has a bigger stake in information technology than ours. Technology is the signature industry in Fairfax County, where NOVA has its administrative offices, as well as in the rest of Washington's Northern Virginia suburbs. Our region may not get as much national attention as Silicon Valley in California or Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, but we've got just as much going on at our 1,600 technology companies. Over the past 20 years, Northern Virginia's technology sector has created a new job every 90 minutes.
Community colleges address the needs of their local communities.
In Detroit, they provide skilled workers for the auto industry. In Southwest Virginia, there's a coal mining program. The biggest need in Northern Virginia right now is for an estimated 19,000 skilled workers in our booming information technology companies. Companies in our region now regularly steal employees from each other. Executives joke about it, but they're dead serious about the necessity to fill these jobs as soon as possible.