County sees shift to lower paying jobs

By Chris Rosenblum

(Paycheck to paycheck series, part two) It's relatively easy to find work in Centre County. But it can be hard to make a living.

Help-wanted signs and the county’s unemployment rate of 3.2 percent, among the lowest in the state, disguise a tough reality for many local workers. Many available jobs are in the service and retail industries and don’t pay enough to support households.

“If somebody wants to work in Centre County, they can work because there’s so much opportunity,” said Linda Calhoun, manager of the Pennsylvania CareerLink office in College Township. “When somebody says they can’t find a job in Centre County, it means they can’t find the good-paying job they want.”

According to the state’s Center for Workforce Information and Analysis, there were 43,478 private-company jobs in the county in 2006, as well as 22,000 government and public education positions.

Based on CWIA figures for private companies only, the county experienced an economic shift from 2001 to last year. More than 2,800 manufacturing jobs were lost, a 38 percent drop despite a rise in construction work. Two big blows came from the closings of the Corning Ashai video and Murata-Erie electronics plants.

At the same time, the local economy added 3,000 jobs in the service sector as commercial development grew along corridors such as Atherton Street and Benner Pike. Service industries make up 80 percent of the local market today.

That has marked a trend toward lower wages.

In 2006, the average annual private wage in the county was $30,232. Manufacturing and construction jobs paid, on average, 29 percent more. Pay in

service-sector jobs was about 7 percent below the county average.

Although there has been growth in the number of some higher-paying service jobs, such as those in health care, professional services and company management, the CWIA calculates that it takes, on average, two retail jobs to earn the same as one manufacturing job.

Calhoun hears frustration among job seekers in a county where, according to 2005 estimates, 87 percent have at least a high school diploma and 39 percent at least a bachelor’s degree.

At a CareerLink job fair this fall, she said, many participants held advanced degrees.

“It tells me that there are a lot of overeducated people in Centre County who can’t find employment because they’re not going to take the retail jobs because they can’t live on them,” she said.

Take one of her recent wanted lists, for example: construction worker, cashier, customer-service representative and auto-salesman positions paid the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. A graphic artist job earned 25 cents more. At the high end were homemaker/companion and secretary jobs paying $9 and $13 an hour, respectively.

“Here we don’t have a big anchor. We don’t have that manufacturing firm hiring 250 people,” Calhoun said. So earning a living is “really difficult.”

One 50-year-old, college-educated State College writer has found that to be true.

Although he wished not to be named, he said he makes $9.25 an hour at a home-improvement store — his highest wage in nine years of local telemarketing, phone survey, food service, custodial and social work jobs. Students and recent graduates willing to work for less keep wages too low to meet high living costs and taxes, he said.

“It’s a tough market,” he said. None of his previous jobs, he said, paid more than $7.50 an hour or made him more than $16,000 a year. For even one person, that falls short of a living wage in Centre County.

A full-time worker in Centre County who lives alone must earn $8.03 an hour, or $16,710 annually, to meet basic needs, according to a living-wage calculator created by Amy Glasmeier, E. Willard Miller professor of economic geography at Penn State.

As determined by the calculator, a living wage for the sole provider of a family of two adults and two children is $20.87 an hour, or $43,416 a year.

By taking into account local transportation, housing, child care, medical and other regular household expenses, living wages are more realistic yardsticks than federal poverty guidelines that are largely based on food budgets, Glasmeier said.

In her opinion, it’s getting harder to make a living wage in Centre County as rents stay high, particularly in the Centre Region, and costs rise while many of the jobs the economy cranks out are low-paying, part-time or seasonal work, often without benefits.

“We’re producing bad jobs,” she said.

On the other hand, what remains of local manufacturing — where people traditionally could earn solid wages on a high-school education — sees little turnover, Calhoun said.

“These are good-paying jobs, and people aren’t giving them up, so there’s no room to hire,” she said.

Danyel Woodring, a basic needs care manager for Community Help Centre in State College, said some service and retail companies, while paying low wages, do offer medical and 401(k) benefits. She recommends them to unemployed clients, even if they’re seeking to earn more.

“We want to see people working and feeling good about themselves,” Woodring said. “We feel working does that.”

Chris Rosenblum can be reached at 231-4620.