For the second consecutive year, Albany Technical College President Anthony Parker used his annual state of the college address to hammer home his concerns about his two biggest areas of concern for the region — structural unemployment and adult literacy.

"Structural unemployment and adult literacy are major concerns in our seven-county SDA (service delivery area),” Parker said Tuesday. “Structural unemployment occurs when employers have positions to fill but the labor force lacks the skills to be hired for those available positions. Then when we figure in that an average of just 62 percent of adults in the region are functionally literate, we have a problem.

Parker said the push toward adult literacy is even more important now since the state last year began enforcing rules that prohibit students without high school diplomas or GEDs from getting into school.

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