Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/956592
People of all ages are look- ing to improve and acquire a broad range of skills, said Elston Forte, NWA Career Specialist at Goodwill Indus - tries of Arkansas. Goodwill offers free professional devel- opment and related services. "A lot of individuals walk through these doors and say 'I may have made X amount in my career, but I see North- west Arkansas growing tre- mendously,'" he said. "So a lot of them are willing to take a step back to take 10 steps forward; they're willing to ac - cept lower-paying jobs just so they can get in with certain companies." Jebaraj said younger work- ers will eventually gain expe- rience and earn more money. The final factor Jebaraj thinks may attribute to de- pressed wages is the lack of employers. As an example, an area may have only a few large businesses, giving them close to a monopoly to keep wages down. "There's no competition for other jobs unless you're willing to move," he said. WHERE PEOPLE WORK The majority — 53 per- cent — of the 233,110 sur- veyed workers in Northwest Arkansas are employed in five job areas: office and ad- ministrative support; sales; transportation and material moving; production; and food preparation and serving re - lated, according to May 2016 data from the federal Bu- reau of Labor Statistics. The estimates don't include the self-employed. Almost 15 percent of jobs are in administrative support. The area is unique in the percent of higher-end jobs, said Mike Harvey, chief op- erating officer for the North- west Arkansas Council. "There's no place in the country frankly that has the concentration on the high- end of business occupations that we do," he said. "We have about six or seven times the national average of the high, white-collar jobs." Harvey said the number of high-paying corporate jobs in the area isn't new because more than 40 percent of new jobs generated in the past 15 years have been white-col - lar jobs. The job creation is led by the three Fortune 500 companies headquartered here — Walmart, Tyson Foods and J.B. Hunt Trans - port Services. "You don't think of poul- try operation, for instance, having a lot of white-collar workers, but Tyson has thou- sands," Harvey said. However, this high tier still makes up a small percent of the overall workforce, and the highest-paying jobs drive up the average wage. While the average hourly wage for all jobs in the region is about $22 assuming a standard 40-hour work week, the average for the five areas with the most employees is $15.22. Bill Mathews, co-owner and operator of Mathews M a n a g e m e n t C o . a n d McDonald's of Northwest Ar- kansas, said the food business in the area is very competi- tive with unemployment hov- ering around 2 percent. He employs about 2,000 people across Northwest Arkansas. Mathews said in his line of work the growing popula- tion has led to more compe- tition with other businesses for good employees. He said he raised starting salaries to $9 an hour about a year ago to keep up with the market. Minimum wage in Arkansas is $8.50 an hour; the national minimum wage is $7.25. But it's not just about sal- ary, Mathews said. "It's about the total pack- age," he said. "We talk to em- ployees not just about hour- ly rate, but all the things we have to offer: Meal discount, uniforms, paid time off, health insurance, there's a lot of benefits in their package, bonus programs for hourly and lucrative for manage- ment. You have to look be- yond hourly rate, especially with millennials. Time off is really important to a lot of them and health insurance. They're also looking for an opportunity to grow with a company." WORTH OF WAGES While the region's wages are low compared to outside the state, Northwest Arkan- sas continues to have the low- est cost of homeownership as a percentage of monthly household income, according to the region report. "I'm not so concerned about wage growth as long as it keeps up with cost of living," Harvey said. Homeownership costs were 15.3 percent of me- dian income in 2016. The peer region average was 17.7 percent and nationally was 18.1 percent. Affordable housing means the cost is lower than 30 per- cent of income and is the big- gest factor when economists discuss cost of living. N o r t h w e s t A r k a n s a s seems to have a lower cost of living, but the region's pover- ty rate is higher than all but one peer region, according to the region report. Housing isn't affordable for everyone in the region, Jebaraj said. "Compared to those peer regions, we tend to do really well. Compared to ourselves and the rest of the state, we're not doing so well. Housing af- fordability is serious; I think it's time now to look into it," he said. The poverty rate in 2016 for Northwest Arkansas was 13.2 percent, a 1.1 percent im- provement from 2015. The Durham-Chapel Hill region was the only peer region to have a higher poverty rate at 14.9 percent. "For the people who have always been here, it is a lot more expensive to live here than it has been. For the peo- ple coming in for jobs, it's still more affordable," Jebaraj said. One explanation for the differential between seem - ingly lower cost of living but higher poverty rate could be the numbers are skewed by those in the top percentile of wages. Northwest Arkansas, along with the rest of the country, is seeing a shrinking middle class. Benton County skews the entire state because of signif- icant high wages, Jebaraj said. If Benton County was re- moved from the state's other 74 counties, it would signifi- cantly lower the entire state's personal income average. "It's that bad," he said. Another explanation could lie in the other cost-of-living factors. Jebaraj said studies have shown Northwest Arkansas transportation costs have been around 29 percent of income, which is significant- ly higher than housing costs. The area is spread out with no mass transit options, he said. Housing and transporta- tion costs combined take up more than half of the average income of those in Northwest Arkansas, higher than in Chi- cago and Seattle, according to the Chicago-based urban research group Center for Neighborhood Technology. Many people don't think about transportation costs because it doesn't come in one big bill, Jebaraj said. It's car payments, insurance, fill- ing up with gas and mainte- nance costs. People will buy a house further out of town because it's cheaper but don't factor in the higher cost of transportation to work and services, he said. "If we don't do anything and stay on the same trajec- tory for 10 or 20 years, we will probably inherit all of the problems of other ma- jor metropolitan areas that haven't developed around transit and haven't dealt with housing affordability, and are now trying to fix it on the tail end with blunt policies when there's no way around it," he said. Ashton Eley can be reached by email at aeley@nwadg.com or Twitter @NWAAshton. Wages v Continued from Page 1V How Northwest Arkansas salaries compare More than half of Northwest Arkansas workers have jobs in the following elds: office and administrative support, sales, transportation and material moving, production and food preparation and serving. Below is a breakdown of those occupations and their salaries, and how they compare to peer regions, Arkansas and the country. Data is from the 2016 Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates. The 2017 report is scheduled to be released Friday. Production Average wage: $30,260 Transportation and material moving Average wage: $34,710 Food preparation and serving related Average wage: $20,940 Sales and related Average wage: $39,240 Office and administrative support Average wage: $33,140 9.04% 9.63% 8.87% 11.41% 14.29% 46.76% All other occupation categories Northwest Arkansas Peer region average percent of total employment Office and administrative support Sales and related Food preparation and serving related Transportation and material moving Production 15.63% 10.09% 9.06% 5.1% 4.75% SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics NWA Democrat-Gazette/CHRIS SWINDLE $0 $10,000 $20,000 $30,000 $40,000 $50,000 $60,000 2016 2014 2012 COMPARISON OF AVERAGE ANNUAL WAGES United States Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C. Raleigh, N.C. Arkansas Peer Average Des Moines-West Des Moines, Iowa Austin-Round Rock, Texas Madison, Wis. Northwest Arkansas 5.9% 4.6% 2.9% Northwest Arkansas 5.2% 3.9% 3% Madison, Wis. 5.7% 4.2% 3.2% Austin-Round Rock, Texas 5% 4.1% 3.4% Des Moines-West Des Moines, Iowa Raleigh, N.C. Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C. 5.7% 4.2% 3.2% 7.4% 5.1% 4.3% 7.3% 5.1% 4.5% 2012 2014 2016 2012 2014 2016 2012 2014 2016 2012 2014 2016 2012 2014 2016 2012 2014 2016 COMPARISON OF UNEMPLOYMENT RATES $41,760 $46,100 $47,080 $44,910 $45,880 $54,500 $47,694 $36,850 $45,790 $42,410 $47,490 $48,150 $46,600 $47,430 $55,840 $49,102 $37,940 $47,230 $44,980 $50,830 $50,830 $49,420 $50,410 $57,850 $51,868 $39,590 $49,630 Low unemployment, low wages Northwest Arkansas has the lowest unemployment rate and lowest annual wages among its peer regions. Data is from the 2016 Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates. SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics NWA Democrat-Gazette/CHRIS SWINDLE "There's no place in the country frankly that has the concentration on the high-end of business occupations that we do. We have about six or seven times the national average of the high, white-collar jobs." — Mike Harvey, chief operating officer for the Northwest Arkansas Council Want to Make A Difference? It takes less than an hour and the one pint donated can save up to three lives. To learn more about the process just visit our website at www.cbco.org. Donate blood. NWA Newspapers LLC is a proud sponsor of Community Blood Center. 2V v SUNDAY, MARCH 25, 2018 ∂ ∂