ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 28, 1996 TAG: 9601260002
SECTION: ECONOMY PAGE: 12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
The good-paying job signifies business and personal success. It is believed to prevent crime. It is the foundation of campaign platforms and visions about the future of America.
But there is no universal definition of "good-paying" in terms of the money the jobs pay.
It takes at least $7 an hour to live independently, said Corrine Gott, superintendent of Roanoke's Department of Social Services.
To afford an $85,000 home - an average selling price in the Roanoke Valley - you'd have to make $15 an hour.
And yet, local government policies have as their chief aim the retention and creation of good-paying jobs, even though the meaning of the phrase is unclear.
"That would be a great debate," said Pat Cupp, who used the phrase good-paying as he campaigned for state office last fall. Cupp, the co-owner of a Blacksburg real estate company, is clear what he meant at the time: Good jobs help keep people out of trouble.
At BCR Real Estate and BCR Property Management, Cupp said, he employs several people in good-paying jobs - with salaries high enough to afford a home - but he declined to cite their wages. He said his company pays entry-level office workers and laborers minimum wage plus a dollar, adding the extra dollar added because "we think we can get better people."
Keith Furr, a Blacksburg retiree, wrote about "good-paying" jobs last year in a letter to the editor of this newspaper supporting the proposed "smart" road. He said a good job pays at least a double-digit hourly wage.
"A decent-paying job for a young man, I'd say, today would pay $20,000 to $25,000," Furr said.
A Virginia Tech administrator who himself received nearly $100,000 per year, Furr would define good-paying for a middle-aged person at $40,000 to $45,000. "He'd be able to have a home, buy a car, send his kids to college," Furr said.
The debate is more than academic. Four of the six economic sectors that have seen job growth of 10 percent in the last three years pay average wages of more than $10 hourly: construction and mining; durable goods manufacturing; printing and publishing; and transportation and public utilities. But the economy has also produced thousands of new jobs paying much less - in restaurants and at temporary staffing firms and other service operations.
Is a $10 an-hour-job good-paying? Few economic developers in this area would pass up a chance to land a company paying such wages. Botetourt County Administrator Gerald Burgess has touted $12 per hour as a respectable wage and one that helps justify giving a new or expanding company public grants and other business incentives to defray the project's costs. Incentives have been paid to industries paying much less.
Here's what Roanoke area jobs currently pay: Of 80 occupational groups recognized by state labor officials, only 12 pay an average of $15 per hour, or about $30,000 annually, or more, according to the Virginia Employment Commission. About 30 of 80 pay $12 per hour, or about $25,000. Half pay $10 per hour, about $20,000 annually, and the rest pay less than $10 per hour.
The Roanoke Valley's lower living costs, which run about 92 percent of the national average, hold wages slightly lower than in other Virginia urban areas, which have higher living costs.
This is supported by a comparison of the wages in the Roanoke metropolitan area, the Alleghany Highlands and Fairfax County in Northern Virginia.
Look, for example, at auto repair, a business that operates with similar technology from community to community. The average weekly wage is $302 in Alleghany County, $330 in the Roanoke area and $518 in Fairfax County.
Domestic helpers make $138 weekly in Alleghany County, $170 in Roanoke and $212 in Fairfax County. The weekly paycheck of manufacturing employees is $498 in Alleghany County, $585 in the Roanoke area and $803 in Fairfax County - although this also reflects the greater concentration of high-tech, high-paying industries in Northern Virginia.
The going rate isn't always high enough, however, for a company to attract workers in periods and places with low unemployment, such as currently in Roanoke Valley. Jobless rates of between 3 percent and 5 percent in the Roanoke metropolitan area suggest that most everyone who wants to work can find a job. At such a low rate, the majority of the people classified by statisticians as unemployed are believed to be those who are temporarily out of work because they are changing jobs, VEC said.
In the Roanoke Valley, while the legal minimum wage is $4.25, most employers in lower-paying industries actually pay at least $5 to $5.25 per hour, because they must compete against each other to attract and keep employees, VEC said.
A construction official called competition a "bottom line" factor in the setting of that industry's wages. Employers get results from even small increases, said George Bristol, regional director of the Roanoke office of American Contractors General of Virginia. He said workers will consider changing jobs to gain an additional 10 cents an hour if they believe they have a better opportunity at another company.
The temporary staffing industry is experiencing the same thing, said Beth Pinson, sales manager of Adia Personnel Services in Roanoke. "They will leave us and go to somebody else for a quarter" more an hour, Pinson said.
Employers who are unwilling or unable to raise wages have expanded benefits instead. "I see competition for employees built on benefits rather than hourly wage," said Bruce Wood, president of The Management Association of Western Virginia in Roanoke. It is not true in every case, he said, but it is true more often than in the past.
If a job pays good benefits - such as insurance, vacation and holidays - a worker may be inclined to accept less pay. A full benefit package costs an employer about a third of an employee's wages or salary, said Linda Bass, an economic development specialist with the city of Roanoke. For example, an $8-an-hour job without benefits pays $16,640 per year, but a $6.50-an-hour job with full benefits is worth $17,982. The worker with the smaller hourly wage effectively receives nearly $1,350 more compensation.
One organization concerned with the level of wages is the Roanoke-based New Century Council, which oversaw the writing last summer of a plan for the future of the Roanoke and New River valleys and Alleghany Highlands.
The council wants to see per person income - gross earnings divided by population - to rise by 2015 from 1993's level of $21,481, or 3 percent above the national level, to at least $21,840, or 5 percent above the national norm.
The Roanoke metropolitan area ranked as one of only 14 metro areas in the Southeast with a per capita income higher than the national average last year.
The New Century Council shied from setting a target hourly wage, fearing that doing so might spook the business community. "It would send a message to a bunch of our corporate citizens that we're trying to cost them profits," said Beverly Fitzpatrick, the council's executive director.
Fitzpatrick said people might agree an annual salary of $15,000 - about $7.20 an hour - constitutes good pay.
Working at a job that pays less is not throwing away one's talents, however, he said.
"Lets say I'm a mom," Fitzpatrick said. "My husband works and makes $15,000. I've got two kids, and I think it's important for me to stay home with them instead of having an empty nest." If that woman took a part-time job paying $5,000 a year, the hypothetical family would have significant extra money, he said.
"She is making a choice. Unless we have jobs like that - for people like that - then the quality of life in this region is not what it ought to be," he said.
LENGTH: Long : 132 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Chart: The Roanoke Valley pay scale. color.by CNB