Is every new job a good job?
Not necessarily. Brian Chasnoff, in a story published in the San Antonio Express-News, writes about the mixed blessing that is the so-called Texas “Economic Miracle.” The event that has touched off angst in the Alamo City is the decision by Maruchan Inc. of Japan to locate a ramen noodles factory on the city’s southwest side, with the blessing of city and county officials, that would create 600 new contract jobs that include health, vision, and dental benefits. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that the jobs will pay $7.25 an hour: minimum wage. This is a dilemma for a city that has a long history of being a low-wage town, not to mention for a state that ranks first in jobs that pay at or below the minimum wage. (San Antonio is also home to five Fortune 500 companies as of 2011.)
“In fact,” Chasnoff writes, “37 percent of all jobs added in Texas in 2010 paid minimum wage or less. Overall, about a third of all jobs in Texas fail to support a family of four.”
This is an old story in San Antonio. I can recall working on a story back in the seventies when local politics was in an uproar over an upstart community activist organization called COPS (Communities Organized for Public Service), one of whose objectives was to bring more high-wage jobs to the city. The local business community had commissioned a study that concluded San Antonio should concentrate on low-wage jobs, and COPS’s leaders had found out about it. Within a few years, Henry Cisneros would become mayor and the direction of the city would change permanently.
Since those days, COPS has become a fixture on the political scene, and city and county leaders have tried to set wage standard for companies wanting to locate here. Still, the median hourly wage of $14.40 an hour is $2.50 below Houston’s and $2.80 below Austin’s and Dallas’s. It is no coincidence that a city with such a low wage scale has the highest average credit card debt of any city in America: $5,177. The guideline is that companies seeking tax abatements should pay a “living wage” of at least $10.75 an hour. Maruchan is promising to make an investment of some $325 million, plus it will pay $5.8 million to local taxing entities.
Chasnoff quotes economist Keith Phillips, an economist for the San Antonio branch of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, as saying, “Low skilled jobs are not the problem. It’s low skilled workers.”
There is a lot of concern among local officials about whether the deal is worth it. Mayor Julian Castro sounded less than enthusiastic. “I’d be lying if I said this one wasn’t a close call,” he told Chasnoff. “There were strong arguments on both sides. But this was an unusual case. I decided to stand by it.”
100 Year decision says:
This sort of economic development does not add to the quality of life of our citizens, creates little and perpetuates the Texas economic myth. Ours is s state of haves and have nots, driven by Rick Perry and the haves.
What we see is the end game of Reaganomics: trickle down which doesn’t, and more outsourcing than livable job creation. In the end, Texans will pay dearly.
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JohnBernardBooks says:
dems now have job envy?
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Willie James Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 8:51 am
The one thing the dems are not envious of is that the wingnuts have you, JBB.
Actually, Reaganomics did a good job of what it was intended to do: collect wealth among the upper classes. It was not designed to improve our contry or help all Americans.
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Omar Little says:
“Job envy”? Of minimum wage jobs in a noodle factory? No.
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Anon says:
100 year misses the point. Any job is better than no job. This job is important because it means more indirect jobs in trucking, service, and housing with much higher wages. PS: Henry Cisneros runs the SA Economic Development Corp. which brokered the deal to bring them to SA.
Make the argument the city overpaid, anything else is ridiculous.
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Whoa Nellie! Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 12:09 am
“Any job is better than no job” — sounds to me like an ideal argument in favor of maintaining slavery in 1860.
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anon Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 2:27 pm
Whoa Nellie is right. This country is supposed to be better than this.
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Anonymous says:
You have to make $10.00 an hour just to break even if you have a child to care for.
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Fiftycal Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 1:35 pm
So are you saying that if you are a high school drop out with no job skills that you would be better off not having a child? How much does a “single mother” with no income rake in with free housing, free medicaid, food stamps, AFDC, WIC and all the other hand out programs? I’ll bet it’s more than minimum wage.
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anon Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 2:28 pm
We should just let her die in the street, right Fifty?
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Fiftycal Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 5:30 pm
I dunno. Is she an ORPHAN? Does her FAMILY have any responsibility? Do you respect the guy that had 35 kids with 11 different women and doesn’t pay a DIME of child support to any of them? Which part of the Constitution guarantees a “right” to FREE food, shelter and internet?
Endangered Moderate says:
We struggle with this in our community. Any new business is great, but at some point the tax revenues being brought in by a low-wage employer may be eclipsed by the net drain on infrastructure, education, health care and public safety. To Anon @ 4:15: yes, any job is better than no job for the person getting the job. Still, for the community where the job is created I don’t know that I would agree than any new worker/citizen is better than no new worker/citizen.
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Alan says:
“Low skilled jobs are not the problem. It’s low skilled workers.”
This is the crucial point. I’d like to see the statistics for what percentage of Bexar County residents have a high school diploma and what percentage have a college degree.
The issue is not the presence of a Japanese noodle factory. The people who will make $7.25 an hour working there would otherwise be making $7.25 an hour at McDonalds or Walmart, or possibly not working at all.
Instead of criticizing Rick Perry for supposedly bringing too many minimum-wage jobs to Texas, ask him the unpleasant questions about why such a large percentage of our population is available to fill them and unqualified to do anything else. The real answer won’t fit on a bumper sticker.
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Julie says:
25 percent of Bexar County residents have a college degree and 25 percent of the state’s residents have college degrees. In Travis County, 43 percent of residents have a college degree.
The median household income in Bexar County is $48,000 compared to $54,000 for Travis County.
Even though San Antonio is described as a low-wage town, the median household income is only about a thousand dollars below the median for the state.
.
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JohnBernardBooks Reply:
June 19th, 2012 at 7:11 pm
“The median household income in Bexar County is $48,000 compared to $54,000 for Travis County”
cost of living is higher in Travis county because its heavy state or university employees who always pay more for the same.
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Whoa Nellie! Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 12:12 am
Austin used to be a bargain city, but in the past decades it’s become one of the most expensive in the state. State and university wages have stagnated all that time. It’s been developers and Californians and sheer greed that have caused the cost of living in Austin to skyrocket beyond the means of many locals to afford.
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anon Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 8:52 am
That the reason? Really? University employees pay more? True in College Station? Lubbock? San Marcos? Waco? What weak bull.
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Fiftycal Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 5:32 pm
The “cost of living” is higher in Austin because of the outrageous TAXES that support all the giveaway do-gooder programs that go to fund friends of the socialists elected to “run” this mess.
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Anonymous says:
If you go to the state comptroller’s webpage on local sales tax rebate allocation summaries, San Antonio itself has outpaced Dallas’ monthly tax rebate total regularly for the past two years, but Bexar County as a whole still considerably lags Dallas County, due to the differences in the funds sent back to neighboring communities. Dallas has a lot of richer surrounding suburbs; San Antonio only has a few.
So it’s really a metro area-wide problem, and part of that is the decades-old problem of the region south of Interstate 10 being the poorest in the state. If the Eagle Ford oil and gas play last long enough and brings enough benefits to the area, you could end up with the same situation you have in the Midland-Odessa area right now, in that higher wages have to be paid, or companies will lose workers to other industries.
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Patriotone says:
Any business employing people principally at minimum wage is sponging off the community. Its employees are using emergency rooms when they need medical care. They get food stamps to feed their families and if they are lucky, Chips in an effort to keep their kids healthy. These jobs do not help the economy or enhance the American dream.
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John Johnson Reply:
June 19th, 2012 at 7:40 pm
I don’t agree. If those people accepting minimum paying jobs did not have those jobs they would still be using city and county services, wouldn’t they? Still be getting sick. Still using the emergency rooms. The piece says they will even be getting health insurance. No way, in my mind, that these jobs are bad for San Anton unless people migrate in from the border to fill them.
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donuthin Reply:
June 19th, 2012 at 8:19 pm
Perhaps, but if you are attracting minimum wage employees to Texas rather than employing the unemployed already in Texas, it is probably a negative. I doubt that we have many minimum kinda people who want to work out of a job.
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Whoa Nellie! Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 12:14 am
Everyone who thinks these jobs are such great shakes ought to just go and work at one for a year and see how much they like the lifestyle.
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anon Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 9:27 am
and if you don’t like it, maybe you should have thought twice before dropping out of school in the 10th grade so you could play video games or smoke weed.
Whoa Nellie! Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 12:01 pm
Speak for yourself, cause you’re not speaking for me.
JohnBernardBooks says:
Texas Reports 22nd Month of Job Growth
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Julie says:
Travis County has a higher median household income than Bexar County because of the higher paying hi tech jobs in the Austin area.
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JohnBernardBooks Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 5:48 am
sure it does…wink wink
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W Tx Anonymous says:
An important factor not mentioned above is how many of these jobs would provide full-time work (over 35/hr week)? The Workforce Commission doesn’t really track or analyze data about the number of Texans who are working less than 35 hours a week, not because they choose to but because that is the job that’s offered. Some of those jobs also mean the employer can reduce the number of hours unpredictably, meaning less (and inconsistent) take-home pay. A lot of those are “flex-time” jobs, meaning “flex” for the employer’s convenience (not the employee’s), with an hourly schedule that changes from week to week. Those kinds of jobs make it hard if not impossible to take on another job to fill the void of full-time work, because of the unpredictable work schedule. Part-time hours generally mean there is no sick leave, no vacation leave, and no health insurance or other benefits often associated with full-time employment. These are the kind of jobs that are making it hard for families of Texas workers to get by without CHIP, Medicaid, TANF, and other means of assistance. They’re working, but stretched real thin from week to week to make ends meet. Paul, are there any investigative journalists out there who would research this issue and call attention to this economic problem? Somebody needs to.
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rw says:
The problem is really with our educational system.
Our students are graduating high school and college without marketable skills. Skills determine wages. Minimum wage jobs should be temporary while a person is educating him/her self for a better paying job.
If our educational system worked at all the noodle factory will either be forced to pay people to attract them or relocate. This would stop the infrastructure drain that Patriotone is talking about.
BTW, San Diego is 10 highest in credit card debt
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Orale! says:
If someone wants to open a biz with min wage jobs that is their decision. However, no tax abatements or incentives!
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Whoa Nellie! says:
This is the new serfdom of the declining American imperium, so we should just lay back and enjoy it, right?
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JohnBernardBooks says:
How much does a degree in poetry pay?
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Simon Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 6:26 am
….more than Wal Mart.
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Julie Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 9:21 am
A poet gets paid a lot less than an economist, who can make about $95,000 a year. Or, you can work as a blogger for free.
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JohnBernardBooks Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 10:07 am
comments are free I’m sure Paul is compenssted.
Omar Little Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 11:48 am
A poetry degree probably pays somewhere close to what a degree in criminal profiling pays.
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longleaf says:
This reminds me of what I said when Ross Perot first sounded the alarm back in 1983 about the failing student population of the state and then encouraged Gov. Mark White to commit political suicide (which he did) by tapping Ross to head a task force to “solve” it.
Until “brain transplantation” is established as a routinely-available surgical treatment, there is NO SOLUTION, short of Nazi-style eugenics programs (and I don’t think we’re going to resurrect Hitler as a political role model), for this perennial problem of all Third World polities (and we should not deny that Texas is now Third World, regardless of political finger-pointing as to why; it is what it is).
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Blue Dogs Reply:
June 21st, 2012 at 9:37 am
Which opened the door for Bill Clements to return to the Governor’s Mansion in 1986 as a result of White selling his soul to Perot.
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John Johnson says:
Question…are there enough unemployed people in San Anton to fill the slots? Will they accept minimum wage or choose to just stay on government assistance? Does the fact that health, vision and dental benefits are being offered with minimum wages make it more attractive to the unemployed when they are already getting it for free at the country hospital?
My take is, if they had nothing to fall back on the $7.95 per hour w/ benefits would look pretty good.
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Anonymous Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 11:47 am
Would love to see you and all of your fellow high-and-mightys living on $7.95/hour.
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Whoa Nellie! Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 12:05 pm
Exactly. That is not a living wage for an individual in this state, let alone a family. These well-off bozos complaining here about “free rides” wouldn’t be caught dead working for minimum wage if their job suddenly vanished, their company went belly-up, or some new executive decided to outsource the jobs to another country.
Will some of you wannabe aristocrats explain how this consumer-based economy is supposed to function when all the consumers have become paupers? Imbeciles.
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Anonymous Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 1:28 pm
OK — let’s raise the min. wage to $15 per hour. How does that sound? You and I would pay for it — and so would the new employee because the company is just going to have to mark up their sales price to cover it, and this add-on works its way all the way back to the consumer— that’s all of us.
The company might not survive because Chinese noodles are offered on U.S. stores shelves for less. For some of you, this just doesn’t register.
If the minimum wage was $15 would we do away with all the other benefits associated with unemployment and low wages? You think that the unemployed would choose to work and sweat for $15 an hour, or sit on their rears for the freebies?
It all depends on who we are talking about, doesn’t it. I think that many of the blacks and whites would choose to sit on their rears. The Asians and Hispanics would gladly accept the jobs.
How un-PC of me, but we all know it’s the truth. Want to debate this issue? Just look around. Who’s working the menial jobs in your area? Who’s standing in the welfare lines? Which ethic group has the most single parent homes? Do I need to keep going?
Fiftycal Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 5:37 pm
Why not raise the “minimum” wage to $100 an hour? Then everyone would be RICHE! And would pay 40% in income taxes. That would be the cats meow wouldn’t it?
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Texian Politico says:
No tax abatements and no government meddling with salaries either minimum or maximum. Let the free market work. The politicians have made a mess of it.
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John Johnson Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 12:30 pm
Agree, TP. Free market should determine how much it is going to cost me to find sign up an employee.
To Anny’s and Whoa Nellie’s comments…No one would work these jobs – the uneducated, untrained, or the white collar guy who lost his job, if we continue to say go sit on your ass and let us send you an unemployment check, foodstammps, child welfare benefits, and free medical treatment. Where’s the incentive? Seen any of the man on the street interviews outside the unemployment offices and other “get your free stuff here” offices? They will flat tell you “I ain’t gonna take no sweat your ass off job”. Why would they? They are on the dole. You and I pay them to do nothing. You and I pay them to have more children.
Go study up on what Canada did to get their national debt under control…or Puerto Rico. Maybe you will be enlightened.
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John Johnson Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 12:55 pm
For insight into what the Canadians did to curb high unemployment and rejuvenate their economy, go to this link. It might surprise you.
http://www.creators.com/opinion/john-stossel/the-money-hole.html
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Vernon Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 2:14 pm
No one likes lazy freeloaders. And everyone knows how much I love the policies of Canada and Puerto Rico. But I’d like to see real figures/estimates on how many of those you describe game the program. The way I hear some talk, one would get the impression the vast majority of participants are moochers.
Sadly, in any government assistance program you’ll find despicable people fraudulently take advantage of it: Medicare fraud, false BP oil spill restitution claims, HNTB, etc.
But why is the first reaction, as some suggest, gutting an entire program because of the bad actions of a few? Even God agreed to spare Sodom from destruction if 10 righteous people lived there. (FYI – God only found 4 and Sodom was destroyed. Also, some lady was turned into a delicious pillar of salt and sugar, then a neighboring village snacked on for 40 days and 40 nights, I think.)
Yes, ending programs like food stamps or unemployment benefits would indeed keep a few bad people from leeching off the rest of us. It would also hurt a lot of good people and good families who need help the most.
I, for one, will grudgingly tolerate a little bad if a greater good is served. But, again, I’d like to see the numbers.
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John Johnson Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 5:24 pm
I don’t think the Canadians were “moochers”. They just took advantage of what was offered. “I’m going to hand you a sandwich for doing nothing, or you can go work for a sandwich”. Which is the sane person going to choose? The Canadians decided to quit offering free sandwiches and people went to work. It’s as simple as that. We could learn from what they did, but no one is even paying attention. The mainstream media never has used it as an example of what could be. Neither party wants to chance losing votes over making radical changes. We just want to keep on pushing our debt off on our grandchildren. They are going to hate us, friends. Don’t expect them to be delivering a beautiful eulogy at our grave sites unless it is wrapped in warm spit.
texun says:
It’s often not about jobs at all.
The Austin City Council still gives away hefty (and unnecessary) abatements for downtown hotel construction, creating more minimum wage split-shift jobs.
The real goal of these giveaways is to increase the value of center city real estate. The folks who own big chunks of it are well organized and they are extremely influential.
Same thing with the fanciful Austin light rail plan: it won’t relieve any congestion on major roads, but it will enhance the value of commercial property along the proposed route.
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Anonymous Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 6:45 pm
You make me laugh. Light rail doesn’t relieve congestion, it just jacks up property value along the route????? Yeah, the Blue Train from downtown Chicago to and from O’Hare has really inflated all that property along the way. It cost me $2 to ride this train. Over $40 if I take a cab in the stop n go traffic. The same scenario in St. Louis.
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Blue Dogs says:
No wonder why Austin city politics has gone crazy just like Houston politics.
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paulburka Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 2:56 pm
Always has been crazy.
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anita says:
I think it’s important to keep in mind that these are jobs that are subsidized by the local government, and they need to quit being a cheap date and insist on quality jobs that pay well and provide some path to upward mobility.
Austin has actually been fairly selective — the reference above to abatements for hotels is incorrect. The City offered fee waivers in return for the owner doing certain things (including paying a prevailing wage to construction workers), but no tax abatements. The owner actually declined the fee waivers, in the end.
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texun Reply:
June 20th, 2012 at 4:18 pm
Anita is correct re. the offering to Mariott: it was not an offer of tax abatement.
She is dead-on right–that cities and other branches of government should not be cheap dates!
Did the owners turn down the offer whereby the City assumed the expense of adapting utilities in exchange for concessions?
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Don in Waco says:
So what happens when this bundle of minimum wage jobs are taken by a bundle of those who ususally work minimum wage food prep/packing house type jobs? That is, Hispanics. Hispanics with more than the average number of children. Does the host city get extra $ for schools and city services too? Noodle that. I really don’t care what the race might be but reality in Texas is that’s who will take the jobs. There’s a byproduct for bringing in those type of jobs, for better or worse.
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Panadero says:
The trouble in San Antonio, of course, is cultural. I don’t mean the ethnic demography. I mean education. Drive through Alamo Heights during a voting year and the election signs urge residents to vote “yes” for school bonds. And the school bonds pass. Drive through any other part of San Antonio, and the signs urge residents to vote “no” and the school bonds fail. Not only do our kids drop out at alarming rates, our city just doesn’t place a premium on education. Meanwhile, 6,000 tattooed, pierced, overweight, poorly dressed young men and women headed for jobs in the noodle plant showed up at the Alamodome last week to audition for American Idol.
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