Nearly three decades separate President Barack Obama's visit to Pittsburgh last week from President Ronald Reagan's visit here in 1983. Economic conditions in Pittsburgh in 1983 compared to those in 2011 are nearly mirror images of one another, yet in many ways the two messages were the same.

When Reagan landed in Pittsburgh in April 1983, he had arrived at the heart of the nation's economic upheaval. A deep national recession seemed unending, and the Pittsburgh region in particular appeared to be facing the abyss with unemployment rates peaking at 18 percent. Local unemployment rolls had reached 200,000, and it was not clear the economic cataclysm would ever end.

Today, the nation is emerging from what has been dubbed the "Great Recession," but Pittsburgh has remained the outlier in economic resiliency and stability. No longer the nation's laggard, local unemployment rates have remained lower than the nation's for a record four years and counting. Workers and families no longer flee the area, and regional real estate markets have sustained a steady appreciation unlike most anywhere else in the country.

President Reagan came to a very different Pittsburgh to address the National Conference on the Dislocated Worker. It was no coincidence such a gathering was held here, given the unprecedented destruction of local jobs and the growing army of angry unemployed workers across what soon would be called the Rust Belt.

Despite the job losses, though, some jobs were not being filled, Reagan noted. He cited the help wanted ads then appearing in newspaper classified sections:

"I'll read you the entire ad," he said. " 'System programmer -- large-scale IBM, VTAM, TSO/SPF, ACF, CICS, OS/MVS.' The point is that we're in a new age. No longer do the ads simply offer jobs with good hours and no heavy lifting. You have to be a specialist to know what the ad is even about."

Of course, the ever-quickening pace of technological change means that the perfect candidates for those cutting-edge jobs in 1983 would be unemployable Luddites today if those skills remained all that they knew. And this was Mr. Obama's point at Carnegie Mellon University. He focused on the importance of manufacturing to the U.S. economy and the fact that even manufacturing now relies on workers with sophisticated training and skills.