Political implications aside, Gov. JB Pritzker’s economic development tour of Japan offers a practical lesson.

About 50 political, business and education leaders are in Tokyo this week. The governor’s office touts Japan as Illinois’ eighth-largest export market worth more than $2.59 billion last year, up 31.7% since Pritzker took office. Japanese employers have more than 56,000 Illinoisans working across 1,600 locations under 450 corporate subsidiaries.

Those and other numbers are impressive, as was the shrewd timing of an announcement Monday – the trip’s first day – that Sysmex America will expand its U.S. headquarters in Lake County by adding 110 jobs to the existing 550, investing $20.6 million in development and manufacturing of medical diagnostics equipment.

Standing out in the news release announcing the expansion is a quote from Kristin Richards, director of the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity:

“Illinois shines as a powerhouse in developing a talented workforce for the life science industry with 37 institutions offering industry-related programs in the Chicagoland area alone.”

What that means specifically to Sysmex is a workforce able to support “automated in vitro diagnostic hematology, flow cytometry, technology solutions, coagulation and urinalysis analyzers, reagents and information systems for laboratories and health care facilities in North and South America.”

You don’t need to understand all those terms – search engines helped me! – to see the building blocks of education geared toward a certain field and how a critical mass of both training programs and willing employers result in a stable jobs market that bolsters a local economy.

It’s obviously more complex than “if you build it, they will come.” The region doesn’t end up with 37 institutions offering such programs overnight. And government can only do so much to motivate the private sector, although medical diagnostics is clearly a pretty safe bet as a growth industry.

But apply this filter to some of our public sector staffing shortages and find a little clarity on those challenges. For one thing, working on a coagulation analyzer is probably a little less stressful than being a prison nurse or child welfare investigator. But more broadly is the idea that if we want people to fill certain jobs in certain areas, the training needs to be in those regions and there has to be some logic in the expense of earning qualifications and the potential earnings once hired.

Again, at the risk of oversimplifying, we can’t just build a new teaching college in a low-income area and crank out dozens of early childhood specialists who will never leave the area code. But we can understand which end goals rest many layers atop certain fundamental steps. Those investments aren’t as celebrated, but without them the high-profile victory laps are impossible.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. Follow him on X @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.