ST. CROIX - V.I. Labor Commissioner Albert Bryan Jr. told the Rotary Club of St. Croix on Thursday that he was going to speak to the positive.

Bryan said that he has been talking a lot lately about the negative aspects of the territory's economic outlook since HOVENSA announced it would cease refining operations - and he decided to present a more hopeful picture to the Rotarians.

So, instead of talking about the unemployment rate, he spoke in terms of the employment rate.

He talked about possible opportunities that the territory could tap into.

And he spoke about the territory's young people holding the greatest opportunities for its future.

The territory's employment rate is 91.5 percent, with an employment rate of 90.4 percent on St. Croix and of 92.3 percent on St. Thomas, Bryan said.

After the HOVENSA announcement, he said, there were some immediate things that he and his family had to decide.

"The first thing is, we're staying. The second thing is, we're staying positive," Bryan said.

Change is coming - and Bryan noted that transition is the painful part of change.

"People say we had no idea that this was coming," he said. "But we did."

He pointed out that St. Croix, during the course of many years, has seen the disappearance of a number of industries, including its watch industry, its pharmaceutical industry, an alumina manufacturer and a number of distilleries.

"All of this slowly but surely disappeared," he said.

He said that he believes the way forward from the HOVENSA announcement is education and in thinking and doing things outside the usual way.

The Labor Department's latest estimate of the number of workers who directly will lose their jobs - employees of HOVENSA and its contractors - by HOVENSA's refinery closing is 2,471.

HOVENSA has said it anticipates that it will begin to release employees in mid-April.

The Labor Department estimates that about 1,200 of those currently working for HOVENSA or its contractors will come to the department for re-training services, Bryan said. The price tag for each of those displaced workers to go through that process likely will cost about $6,000, he said.

The Labor Department is applying for grants to help deal with the re-education costs for displaced refinery workers, according to Bryan.

The Labor Department anticipates that more of the displaced workers will apply for unemployment benefits - although that is likely to come in waves later in the year, from September through December, as their severance pay is exhausted, Bryan said.

About 1,700 people in the territory currently are collecting unemployment insurance benefits - although others have been out of work so long that they have exhausted their benefits, he said.

"We expect to see another 2,000 or so to emerge from the refinery," he said.

HOVENSA officials have reported that some of its highly skilled employees have been actively recruited, Bryan said.

About 40 percent of those who work for HOVENSA or its contractors could wind up leaving the territory, he said.

Bryan pointed to areas where he believes the jobs will be in the future, including allied health, renewable energy, construction and information technology.

He also spoke of the possibility of developing a form of sustainable education tourism for the island and pointed out that the University of the Virgin Islands has a huge campus on St. Croix with a technical school just across the road.

He mentioned the possibility of health-related tourism - and the opportunity that the island's natural beauty and peacefulness could offer for businesses like spas.

Bryan also spoke about Fortune 100 companies "being created out of the minds of young people," and pointed to Google, EBay and Facebook as examples.

"The opportunity is greatest for our young people," he said, adding that now is the time to make the commitment to lead young people down the road to creativity and entrepreneurship.

- Contact Joy Blackburn at 714-9145 or e-mail jblackburn@dailynews.vi.

Sign up for Text Alerts

Sign up for e-mail newsletters