Help wanted: High-wage jobs
Arizonans need jobs.
The state shed 10.2 percent of its work force, or 276,500 jobs, since the recession started in December 2007, according to figures supplied by Lee McPheters, director of the J.P. Morgan Chase Economic Outlook Center at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.
McPheters’ stats also showed the state ranked last in job creation nine months out of 12 from November 2008 through October 2009.
That shouldn’t be surprising because since the 1950s, Arizona’s economy has been based on population growth — by that, I mean people moving into the state, not the number of births.
Job creation and economic expansion were built on construction of new homes, new infrastructure and new businesses to serve the people in the ever-expanding sea of single-family rooftops.
But the most recent recession put the brakes on that type of growth. In fact, Elliott D. Pollack, whose Elliott D. Pollack & Co. specializes in real estate and economic consulting, recently told viewers of Channel 8’s “Horizon”: “The whole thing (economy) essentially is imploding because people aren’t showing up.”
According to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, Arizona’s population had grown by 96,401 from July 1, 2008 to July 1, 2009. That ranked Arizona seventh in population growth.
But of that growth, 54,299 represented the “natural increase” (the result of adding births and subtracting deaths from the previous year’s estimate). The “net migration” to the state (the result of adding those who move in and subtracting those who move out from the previous year’s estimate) was 42,108.
Compare that with cumulative figures representing the state’s population growth from April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2009. For the decade as a whole, the natural increase of 464,238 was less than half the net migration of 986,764.
This suggests that Arizona remained among the fastest-growing states in 2009 only because, thanks to the downturn, the rate of growth everywhere else in the U.S. had come pretty much to a standstill as well.
Pollack’s firm produced a report that’s the basis for the Arizona Economic and Job Recovery Bill, introduced by Republicans in the State House of Representatives on Jan. 11.
“I think that we’re at a crossroads,” Pollack told Horizon anchor Ted Simons.
He said that since the 1970s, “per capita personal income, which is an economic euphemism for standard of living, has been declining in Arizona relative to the U.S., and that’s because the jobs we have been getting here have not been high wage jobs. We have not been good at getting those and we’re finally paying the piper.”
Pollack said that many of the state’s high-paying companies — like Boeing — were lured here long ago but that the state has failed to attract much in the way of high-paying employers since those days.
“If we don’t attract those companies that pay above-average wages, we’re destined to have essentially a third-world economy,” he said.
20 Jan, 2010 >
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freelance writer
AlanaNorris - 22 Nov, 2011 - 16:06:31
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