Workforce Development - A Good Investment?

Unaffordable Housing Makes It Hard To Fill Jobs

It's happening all over the country where affordable housing is dwindling, and the workers needed to sustain the local economy are unable to find inexpensive lodging.

For these communities, you might as well tell workers, keep clear - we're unaffordable places to work in...

Add high fuel costs, and ever increasing costs of living, many communities are finding that the "weak link" in their economies is the shortage of workers, not shortage of consumers.  Unless a fix is found, these communities are in for a rough road ahead.

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Statistics vs. Real Life

A recent article in Parade magazine discusses a concern about the "real" basis of government published workforce statistics.

The article cites:
Many Americans feel that government statistics don’t match their daily experience. “Inflation seems worse than official reports indicate,” says Arden Davis, who made $94,300 teaching geological engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology last year. His view is widely shared. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) says inflation is low, but the cost of necessities like housing, utilities, health insurance and education is rising faster than wages for most Americans. “ The CPI is heavily influenced by the wealthy, who do most of the spending,” explains Zandi.

The Parade article continues, “It doesn’t reflect the budget of most Americans.” Gary Earl Ross, who earned $64,900 as an English professor and author in Buffalo, N.Y., agrees: “Any wage increase I’ve gotten is offset by increases in the cost of living,” he says, “and in the fall I’ll have two kids in college.” Marie Ouano made $75,000 last year performing X-ray and MRI exams as a radiology technician but says housing in San Francisco is so expensive, she’s not sure she can afford to buy a home on one income.

This has always interested me.  The CPI, against which many published economy statistics are grounded, generally excludes costs of housing, food, and energy costs, which have all been rising as of late. 

Does this make sense?

Blog :Global Labor Strategies

Global Labor Strategies an advocacy blog containing both accepted as well as highly controversial discussion of ideas and resources for the global labor movement caught my attention recently.  It is an excellent resource on what's happening in the organized labor community, and provides good insights on policies and activities of "players" in the global labor marketplace.  Stuff that we all need to stay on top of.

The authors include Tim Costello who has over 40 years of work and union experience in the area. He helped organize and served as Coordinator of the Boston based North American Alliance for Fair Employment, Brendan Smith is a legal expert (J.D. Cornell University Law School) specializing in national and international labor law and policy.  He is currently co-director of the UCLA Law School Globalization and Labor Standards Project, Jeremy Brecher a leading labor historian, writer, and documentary script writer who has for more than two decades collaborated with Costello in research and publishing numerous books about labor and globalization, and Claudia Torrelli of Montevideo, Uruguay. who handles GLS’s Latin American network, an activist the in labor—community based Hemispheric Social Alliance, and in other social movement organizations in Latin America.

In this blog, you will find insights not readily available elsewhere.  For example, a recent article "Why Labor Can and Should Lead a Reassessment of Approaches to China"  examines the role of the U.S. labor movement in the reassessment of approaches to China.

Great blog and excellent overall resource on this important aspect of todays global workforce.

When Taxes Drive Away Workers

Since I left upstate NY in the 70's due to cold weather and oppressive tax burdens (business and personal), the state has become even more economically unattractive to resident and non-resident workers.  Unless something changes, it will continue to struggle to find and retain the "best and the brightest"

This is also the thought of I can't Wait to Leave an article posted on The Knickerbocker Blog, a production of The Business Council of New York State, Inc. a group seeking to publish economic data, educate policymakers, and advocate ways to make the Empire State more attractive to businesses and workers.  They have their work cut out for them.

Despite its many and varied charms, New York is shrinking. The state lost 26,000 residents from July 2004 to July 2005. That's as if everyone is Saratoga Springs vanished.

That's a lot of resources to lose and it doesn't bode well for the future. Along with losing personal clout, the state will lose representation in Congress, if this trend continues.

The Business Council of New York State cites high taxes as the likely reason people are fleeing the state. No matter how nice a place is, people need to be able to pay the rent or mortgage with something left over for themselves or their families.

With tax season coming up, it's chilling to realize that New York's state and local tax burden is the highest in the nation at $4,645 per person. Florida and Texas have respective tax bites that are about $2,000 less. Not surprisingly, both gained population while New York lost it.

. . . .

Mountain of Debt

Our newest workers coming into the workforce are coming in saddled with the largest debt load in US history.

Debt doesn’t “just happen”; it is consciously, carefully engineered by the debt industry to begin in childhood with the Saturday morning cartoon consumption-fest of products aimed at children, including “Credit Barbie Dolls” and “Shopping Barbie Dolls” that make the sounds of credit card transactions when they complete their imaginary purchases in “Barbie Land.”  A few years later, the same child, now in college, is deluged at freshman registration with a plethora of credit card offers which although they may begin with only a $500 limit, are soon increased if the student makes regular payments.  While as a college professor I have long been aware of the financially lethal consequences of college students holding three or four credit (or more) cards at a time, I was unaware that the average college student graduates today with approximately $20,000 in credit card debt.

I am well aware, however, that the same student is likely to graduate with an additional $30,000 + debt in student loans. Thus, it is not unusual for a college graduate to commence his/her career, in debt to the tune of $50,000 or more. Still more frightening is the reality that for that graduate, and indeed for most of the working and middle-class U.S. population, indebtedness never ends! As credit card customers get older, their diminished consumption needs must be replaced by younger customers whose “buy now, pay later” illusions are unchallenged by life experience.

A new documentary “In Debt We Trust” recently written and produced by Danny Schecter, sheds some extraordinary and timely light on the matter.  It starts from the standpoint that our society is set up to keep us struggling for our entire lives, saving almost nothing, and remaining in perpetual debt, the documentary proceeds to reveal the impossible shell game that is perpetrated on players in the debt game by a credit industrial complex which cannot exist or profit without debt, and specifically, losers in the game. 

Ask yourself what type of worker stress is caused by employees that are enslaved by crushing debt loads?  Does this scenario encourage "economic" decisions over "ethical" choices?  Do these individuals "follow their hearts" and experience the discovery that comes from learning at a normal pace, or are they feel  forced to change jobs just to stay ahead of the game.  Or worse yet, what potential does this situation create for doing dishonest deals, or "dipping into the till?"

Are Workforce Wages Really Keeping Up?

The government’s inflation numbers, along with other economic statistics it issues, are being manipulated to make it appear that the U.S. economy is doing better than it actually is and to limit Social Security and other benefits tied to the Consumer Price Index.

The prices of particular goods and services included in the CPI are subject to "hedonic" adjustments based on changes in quality as determined by government bureaucrats. Such adjustments often cause inflation to be understated, inflation-adjusted gross domestic product and other measures of economic output to be overstated, and wages, pensions, and Social Security payments tied to the index to lag behind the actual cost of living.

Mortgage interest and other costs of home ownership are left out of the index completely, on grounds that an owned home is an "investment." Instead, an "equivalent rent" component is included in the index—making up 30 percent of the core CPI—based on surveys of rental costs in various parts of the country.

This provides an additional way for the government to understate inflation and continue to report positive economic news. In recent years, for example, the real-estate bubble has caused home prices to rise sharply along with a burst of new home construction, putting downward pressure on rents. The result has been to understate the housing cost component of the CPI and the index as a whole.  SO wen you hear that the CPI inflation rate is low, remember that the government's CPI (Consumer Price Index) numbers, exclude food, housing, and energy. 

Unfortunately, worker wages (which are disproportionately spent on items like food, housing, and energy) as a result have been falling behind in many parts of the country.  So before you look at statistics and say "gee that's great, we appear to be doing OK, look a bit harder at the data and take the time to understand what's really happening.

Labor shortage nails builders

Christian Conte writing for the Jacksonville Business Journal tells a familiar story - construction companies are desperate for workers, and despite local efforts by businesses and industry groups the problem is likely to get worse before it improves.  There are about 24,000 vacant construction jobs in FL alone and few takers.

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Fla. legislators, advocates lay out workforce housing strategies

The Fla. legislative session starts in March and housing advocates are already laying out their legislative strategy. Goal number one is full funding for nation's the largest affordable housing trust fund worth almost $1 billion. Could that be why Bill Gates and Roy Icahn are buying into Florida's housing industry?

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What Do We Mean By Housing the Workforce

Workforce Housing is a relatively new term that is increasingly popular among planners, government administrators and housing activists. The following article describes the dimensions of Workforce Housing and underlines the importance of affordable housing in todays ultra-competitive labor market.

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Fla. Home Builder Assn. Prez Lays Our Affordable Housing Strategy

Florida Home Builders Assn., the largest state builder org. in the U.S., boasts a $42 billion economic impact and 472,000 workers in Fla. John Wiseman, president of FHBA, laid out the association's affordable housing strategy in an op-ed in the state capital's only daily newspaper. The essay has a few holes. An activist website critiques it.

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Florida legislators draw battle lines for "workforce housing" showdown

A Fla. legislative Workgroup is preparing for the 'big show' when lawmakers convene in March. More than half a billion dollars for affordable workforce housing is at stake. Last year, lawmakers pillaged the largest affordable housing trust fund in the U.S. This year, housing advocates are determined not to let them do it again.

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Workers, Si! Housing, No!

Worker housing, That’s the key; Just don’t build it, Close to me.
by William A. Collins

When it comes to offering everyone a house or apartment, our state shows considerable character. We publicly worry about where our teachers, cops, firefighters, and maybe even nurses, are going to live. Not that we do anything, but at least we worry.

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