One South Georgia Chamber is encouraging companies to create higher-paying jobs for the area...

Last week, the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce revealed that Valdosta makes only sixty percent of the national average wage.

Now, the Chamber is working to help businesses employ more college graduates and thus, increase the current wage average.

"I think we kinda fit exactly what the community is looking for 'cause we're doing a little bit of both," said Doug Swords, a Valdosta business owner.
" We start people that are still in school and we've also hired people that have graduated and we try to pay competitive wages in order to keep them here and keep them from moving to Atlanta or Jacksonville."

Eventually, the Chamber hopes to create a thousand jobs for higher-educated residents by year 2012.