COLUMBIA — Putting residents to work in high-paying jobs and rescuing the state from chronic high unemployment will require better coordination between research, industry and government, legislative and business leaders said Tuesday.

A new committee will bring together more than a dozen public and private agencies to help turn research projects at the state’s universities and hospitals into jobs. The voluntary, not-yet-created Knowledge Sector Council could meet as early as September.

The council’s role will be to help companies find the money and connections they need to be successful, said Bill Mahoney, the chief executive of the South Carolina Research Authority.

In past decades, South Carolina recruited companies by touting the state as anti-union, with plenty of low-wage labor. But with textile and other factory jobs waning, legislators are hoping to transform the economy through investments in research.

“The No. 1 issue facing our state for the next two decades is our economy,” said House Speaker Bobby Harrell, who has championed the idea. “Our state has held the title of ’one of the worst unemployment rates in the nation’ for far too long.”

The state’s jobless rate was 6.2 percent last month, which remains above the national rate of 5.5 percent. South Carolina ranked 47th nationwide in per capita income in 2007, down from 45th in 2006, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Harrell said economic development bills, including various tax incentives, passed by the Legislature over the last six years — many of them over the governor’s veto — have not been fully used to improve the economy. The Charleston Republican noted the state’s unemployment rate has remained high throughout Gov. Mark Sanford’s tenure, often among the worst three, but he declined to directly criticize the Republican governor or specify lost opportunities.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Hugh Leatherman, often a target of Sanford’s criticism, was more direct.

“It’s painfully clear to me this administration does not care about creating jobs for our people,” said Leatherman, R-Florence. He said the governor’s leadership on economic development is “sorely lacking.”

But Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer called legislators’ criticism “total fiction.” According to the Commerce Department, the state has had consecutive record-breaking years in job creation, 15,666 new jobs in 2007 and 14,420 jobs in 2006, totaling $7 billion in investments. He called the announcement pure politics, saying legislators are trying to distract voters from their overspending when the economy was good, which led to cuts in this year’s budget. And he said unemployment rates are just one of many ways to gauge the economy.

“We don’t think the technology of tomorrow will be picked by some council of wise men sitting in a smoky board room somewhere,” Sawyer said.

Commerce Secretary Joe Taylor said the agency is proud of its recruiting history, as he rattled off a list of companies recruited in the last two years, including a Starbucks roasting and distribution plant in Calhoun County and a Google data center. “Let me make it clear our mission will not be fulfilled until every South Carolinian who wants a job has a job,” he said.

Politics aside, Mahoney said the Commerce Department’s mission primarily is to bring manufacturing jobs to the state, while the council, which will include Commerce, will promote a “knowledge-based” economy through research, much as North Carolina did after creating The Research Triangle Park in 1959.

South Carolina may be decades behind that effort, but through coordination, “we’ll catch up,” perhaps within a decade, Mahoney said.

An affiliate of his Research Authority has helped launch 98 companies from research projects since April 2006, 16 of which have secured $50 million in venture capital. Though the companies’ job tally is small, at 350, workers’ average salary is $77,000. Those companies will hopefully grow and continually spawn more companies, Mahoney said.

“Knowledge economy investment works. It’s still early, but it works,” he said.

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