Low wages a challenge for St. Johns County workers
By Stuart Korfhage Mon, Jan 18, 2016 @ 6:25 am
Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville)
After the Great Recession’s arrival in the last decade, the ensuing years were quickly categorized as the “jobless recovery.”
But in the last several years, the unemployment rate has dipped nationwide and is down to 3.5 percent in St. Johns County.
There is no more jobless recovery but more of a “raise-less” reality for the lowest earners, according to information released earlier this week by the Brookings Institution. From 2007 to 2014, incomes for the bottom 20 percent of wage earners slid in many major metropolitan areas.
As The Associated Press recently reported, the consequence is a widening income gap. The top 5 percent earned 9.3 times as much as the bottom 20 percent nationally in 2014 — the same as in 2013. Before the recession, the ratio was 8.5. In the Jacksonville area, that number was 8.5 in 2014 (about $19,000 vs. about $158,000).
What The Associated Press reported was that the poorest have clawed back some of their earning power since the economy officially began to recover 6½ years ago. But the analysis suggests that strong job growth and modest pay raises have failed to pull millions of Americans back up the economic ladder.
The income disparity is apparent in the housing market. More than 28 percent of renters in the Jacksonville area devoted half their income to housing in 2014, a share that has increased by a third over the past decade.
It’s a problem that challenges low-wage workers, social service agencies and business owners in industries that rely on those workers.
According to a report from the Florida Housing Coalition, median gross rent in St. Johns County was $1,073 for 2014, the most recent data available. It also said that 20 percent of the households in the county are cost-burdened, which is defined as paying more than 30 percent of their incomes for housing.
“When it comes to the workforce, that’s really challenging,” said Bill Lazar, executive director for the St. Johns Housing Partnership, a local nonprofit that provides low-cost housing.
“For those [households] making $35,000 to $40,000, it’s a real challenge for them to find anything you can rent or buy.”
Not having a place for those people to live can create difficulties for small businesses in competitive industries that can’t afford to pay workers $15 to $20 per hour. And a lot of service or tourism-related jobs don’t always offer 40 hours per week.
Among the top 10 occupation categories in St. Johns County, the median earnings for those in food preparation were just less than $12,000 per year, according to the most recent Florida Housing Coalition report. Those in maintenance and grounds cleaning as well as personal care and service also averaged less than $17,000 per year.
At that rate, many people can’t find viable housing options here and instead live in other counties.
“To some degree, in those service industries, the talented ones may be taking that experience and going [to new jobs] closer to where they live,” Lazar said.
It’s certainly cheaper to live in some of the surrounding counties, even Duval. The median gross rent for bordering counties in 2014 was: $1,013 for Clay, $935 for Duval, $1,039 for Flagler and $634 for Putnam.
Local business owner Clay Murphy, who runs two Sonny’s BBQ franchises in St. Johns County, said he hasn’t really had trouble hiring people because of the housing costs. But he added that several of his employees do commute from Putnam County or Flagler Estates, which is a more affordable community on the fringe of St. Johns County.
There is a lot of competition for workers, though, Murphy said. The increasing popularity of St. Augustine as a travel destination has kept a lot of local restaurants busy.
“It’s always a struggle to hire good workers,” Murphy said. “One of the things we’re finding is people tend to stay at a job or leave a job based on who they work for. We’ve been pretty blessed to have kept a good core [of employees].”
Lazar and others would like to see those core workers that business owners like Murphy cherish stay in St. Johns County.
As the Florida Housing Coalition states: “It takes a critical mass of residents with a variety of job skills to make St. Johns County the moderately powerful regional economy it is.
“To encourage our teachers, police officers and health care workers to live in the county, and to avoid driving skilled young residents away, it is necessary to have a wide range of housing options.”
Berneitha McNair, executive director of the Northeast Florida Community Action Agency, said she continues to see the struggles of the low-wage workers, in part because it’s expensive to live here.
“It [income] is kind of stagnant, and we have a lot of requests for our services,” she said. “You have a segment that is doing really well. Also there’s a segment that’s doing very bad. They’re kind of forgotten because the county is doing so well.”
McNair said because the housing costs outpace the wage growth, many of the working poor are forced out of the county. Her agency, which serves seven North Florida counties, sometimes finds housing for homeless veterans. She said the ones from St. Johns County are usually housed in Duval because of the cost savings.
Lack of affordable housing makes it difficult for many of the people they serve, McNair said.
“It’s not that they’re lazy,” she said of the clients. “The jobs that they have don’t pay enough to make ends meet. Unfortunately, it’s getting worse because the cost of living is going up.”
The best solution, McNair said, is to provide opportunities and encouragement for people to obtain more education and training. Her agency tries to get people to take those entry-level jobs and use them as stepping stones to better-paying — or at least full-time — positions.
“In some industries, there’s only so much they can do,” she said. “What we try to do is to deal with the mindset. That’s how you have change in the low-income community.”
Unemployment stays low in St. Johns County, creates competition for workers in some sectors
Posted: January 22, 2016 - 11:37pm | Updated: January 23, 2016 - 4:30am
By STUART KORFHAGE
stuart.korfhage@staugustine.com
St. Augustine Record
While the recent recession wasn’t much fun for anyone, even good economies can create some headaches.
For the record, local employers are much happier dealing with today’s issues.
What they’re currently faced with is a tight labor market, at least in some fields. Information released Friday showed that St. Johns County retained the second-lowest unemployment rate in the state in December at 3.5 percent, which was the same rate as the previous month.
That rate trailed only Monroe County at 3.2 percent. Hendry County had the state’s highest unemployment rate at 7.3 percent in December, followed by Citrus County (6.6 percent) and Putnam County (6.4 percent). The employment information was released by the U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Individual county unemployment rates are not seasonally adjusted.
Florida’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 5 percent in December, down from the revised November rate of 5.1 percent.
A statement from the office of Gov. Rick Scott said the Jacksonville area, which includes St. Johns County, gained 16,600 new private sector jobs since the previous December. The industry with the largest job gain during the year in the area was leisure and hospitality with 5,500 new jobs.
That’s good news for job seekers and a challenge for small business owners in the industry.
Several local business owners or managers said in a place like St. Augustine, there is always competition to get good workers and keep them. Failing to do so can cripple a business, they said.
“There’s so many new restaurants and so many good restaurants,” said Vaughn Cochran, owner of Blackfly The Restaurant on Anastasia Boulevard, in describing the competition for talented workers.
“Your servers are your ambassadors,” he added. “Everything you’ve done to build your business relies on your servers. For a local restaurant like us, it’s really important you find the best servers (and other workers) you can.”
Cochran said his establishment has an advantage over some other places because he has good management and cooks. It’s more of a high-end restaurant with entrees starting at $17 and most in the $20s.
It has also earned a good reputation. The restaurant generally relies on workers who are professionals, not part-timers who are students during the day.
“We have a great operation,” he said. “People that work for us make good money. It’s a desired job. We just don’t have that much turnover. We’re not in a daily hiring mode like some places are.”
That’s not a position many businesses thrive in.
Cyndi Humphrey, owner of the Cedar House Inn bed and breakfast in downtown St. Augustine, said it’s very inefficient to be hiring and training new people on a regular basis.
With it being somewhat of a favorable market for job seekers — at least qualified ones — Humphrey and others like her have to make sure they offer enough incentives to keep employees happy.
Humphrey recently lost a member of her staff of three to a career change. She said her efforts to replace the worker haven’t yielded much response yet.
“It can be difficult to identify people who are a good fit for the B&B (setting),” Humphrey said. “I’m rigorous in my effort to find the right fit.”
And once she does, Humphrey, who purchased the Cedar House Inn in 2009, said she tries to keep them.
That effort includes what she calls “equitable compensation.” Humphrey said she doesn’t reduce staff hours just because it’s a slow week. That helps build loyalty and gives her workers the stability they need.
“The backbone of this industry needs to be recognized,” she said of staff. “In our business, we’re in need of staff, and the pickin’s are slim.”
Because some jobs in the tourism/hospitality industry are seasonal and sometimes low-paying, businesses that want the best employees often distance themselves from that kind of branding.
That’s been the strategy for Old Town Trolley Tours, said general manager David Chatterton.
“We have been focusing for a long time on being an ‘employer of choice’ in St. Augustine,” Chatterton said in an email to The Record. “We have worked hard to ensure our that our compensation packages are competitive — fair wages, medical, dental, vision, 401K, paid vacation, sick pay, well pay, safe driving bonuses, etc.”
Chatterton said the company also focuses on wellness of the employees. And it’s also important not to have an atmosphere of discontent.
A trolley driver who finds his work to be drudgery isn’t likely to be very entertaining to the patrons.
“We recognize that people have lots of choices and that you also have to be the kind of business that people want to come to work every day,” Chatterton said. “The ‘employee experience’ is another major focus for us. One of our company mottos is: ‘We make work days play days.’”
Outside of the tourism industry, landing the right employee is just as important for success, even if the job rarely gets to be like a “play day.”
One of the county’s top employers, Northrop Grumman, is in the final stages of readying a new building for occupancy. The company is in the process of hiring about 400 new workers over a two-year period, adding to the 1,100 already employed.
Those jobs will pay about $45,000 or more per year, according to information filed with the county for an economic development grant.
Even with low unemployment, jobs like that aren’t hard to fill, said Jacqueline Farrell, a public relations official with Northrop Grumman.
“Northrop Grumman maintains partnerships with numerous academic institutions,” she said in an email. “We pride ourselves on helping mentor and develop the next generation workforce. Fortunately, our area has tremendous talent, and we have not had any issue finding local candidates.”
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