View from bottom of wage scale still bleak in Florida
By ROBERT TRIGAUX
Published September 3, 2003
For six years, Bruce Nissen has winced as he's watched Florida's job market try to pull itself up by its bootstraps.
And for six years, the Florida International University economics professor has seen little progress and more than a little slippage.
Nissen, the author of an annual report on Florida's labor market compiled at FIU's Center for Labor Research and Studies in Miami, says his latest study once again bears troubling news. Florida workers who toil in low-wage service jobs in the hospitality, retail and home health care trades continue to lose ground to workers in other states.
More than a quarter of all Florida workers, or 27 percent, are the "working poor" - making less than $8 an hour or $16,640 a year.
No less disturbing is his finding that four of every 10 Florida workers earned less than $9 per hour, or under $18,720 per year.
Sure, Florida seems able to generate lots of low-paying jobs. That dubious skill tends to keep the state's unemployment rate below the national average and give Florida a superficial "can do" gloss of respectability.
The bad news is the state, for all its high-profile intentions, remains glacial in its efforts to create a significant number of better-paying jobs and train low-wage workers to fill them.
Maybe the Sunshine State should be called the Sisyphus State. The Greek myth tells how Sisyphus angered the gods and was forever forced to roll a block of stone up a steep hill. Each time, the stone tumbled back down when he reached the top.
Hopefully, Florida's habit of creating crummy jobs won't reach mythological status. But we're getting close.
We've seen the danger signs before. The Florida Chamber of Commerce last year published a series of "Cornerstone" reports on the state of the economy that clearly warns of Florida's flagging wages. If Florida's wages get too low, the state could lose its allure. Why move to Florida if you can't use your skills in a decent job?
Florida's big challenge is low-wage tourism. It still drives much of Florida's economy. Nissen says it's so dominating that Florida will be hard-pressed to raise state wages with new jobs.
That's a favorite theme of University of Central Florida economist David Scott in Orlando. Each new job changing the beds at another new hotel pulls down the state's average wage rate, he says.
How much of a drag? Hotel/motel and restaurant jobs in Florida paid an average wage of $14,760 last year, just 43 percent of the state's average wage of $34,328. The larger category of "leisure and hospitality" (which includes the hotel/motel and restaurant work) provided jobs averaging only $17,764. And retailing jobs in the state averaged only $23,996, 30 percent percent below the state's average wage.
Scott sums it up better than most: "We really don't need another theme park."
Last month's federal labor data showed that Florida enjoyed the largest increase in employment of any state from July 2002 to July 2003. Florida's jobs increased by 85,400 in the past year, more than twice the 38,700 jobs generated by No. 2 Georgia.
The numbers - and Florida's bragging rights - are deceiving. Many of those new Florida jobs pay poorly. Nissen found in this year's study that the median wage for workers paid by the hour in Florida in 2002 was $9.90. That's 6 percent below the national average of $10.47, and even less than the amount paid in most other Southeastern states.
Gov. Jeb Bush likes citing figures that show Florida has led the nation in job growth for 16 straight months. And Bush speaks frequently, as he did in an economic summit in Tampa last month, about the need to create better-paying jobs.
Can the governor have it both ways? Has the mix of Florida jobs changed much since he took office?
In his annual labor study of 1998, Nissen outlined a job market in Florida that sounds little different from today's. Though the economy is doing well, Nissen said six years ago, wages in Florida haven't changed in 16 years.
"Florida has been sold to the business community as a low-wage, low-tax state with cheap land," Nissen said then. "That's attracting business on the wrong basis, as far as workers are concerned."
Nissen now doubts his prolabor recommendations - setting a statewide minimum wage at $6.15, for example - will capture much attention from Florida's current business and political leadership. But after seeing so many Floridians struggle year after year in the state's low-wage job market, he figures change is inevitable.
Maybe sooner than he thinks. Florida already is being bypassed more often by companies that are aggressively relocating more U.S. work overseas at less expense. The Sunshine State's old trick of appearing cheap to higher-cost parts of the country is losing its luster in this global game.
