Playing Catchup Despite Some Gains, North Idaho Wages Continue To Trail State, National Averages
As the country’s blue collar manufacturing base has eroded, Kootenai County’s has swelled.
That reflects the success of local economic development efforts and gives some hope to the thousands of “underemployed” North Idahoans stuck in low-paying jobs. The average wage for manufacturing jobs in Idaho approaches $12 an hour.
But behind the numbers lies the root of Kootenai County’s wage problem: Even in higher-paying careers such as manufacturing, pay here doesn’t match the state or national averages.
Wage surveys show that workers in North Idaho manufacturing shops take home less money on average than in Ada County, where Boise is home of some of the state’s largest manufacturers. Those companies, and their suppliers, provide high-paying jobs to anchor the southern Idaho economy, said Kathryn Tacke, labor analyst for the Idaho Department of Employment.
In the absence of mega-employers like Micron Technology Inc. and MorrisonKnudsen Co., North Idaho job hunters have to scour for openings at a growing number of small manufacturers.
Coeur d’Alene’s Bill Wold is one of hundreds who continue to hunt for that highpaying job. The 31-year-old moved here last November from Western Washington after giving up a $14-dollar-an-hour logging job.
“It was getting too crowded over there - too many people,” Wold said at the Coeur d’Alene Job Service office Friday. “It’s a little cheaper to live over here.”
Wold has worked a variety of jobs paying between $6-7.50 an hour since he’s been here. He filled out an application Friday for a full-time job in Post Falls that pays benefits.
“Those service jobs - they don’t want to give you any benefits,” he said. “I’m just looking for something where I can either work at a mill or run some heavy machinery. I’ll take a lower wage to be able to do it.”
Wold isn’t alone. Unemployment in Kootenai County moved toward 10 percent last December and hovers around 7.5 percent this year. (And those statistics don’t reflect underemployment, which analysts say is equally troublesome.)
The unemployment rate remains stubbornly high despite Kootenai County’s success at locating new manufacturing businesses such as Stratford Building Corp., Bild Industries, Tapmatic Corp., and the big one, Harpers Inc., with nearly 600 employees.
Some analysts say that it will take much more than more furniture makers and small equipment manufacturers to inflate Kootenai County wages in the long run.
Low pay is not a news flash here. Nearly half of Kootenai County residents take home less than $15,000 in service-related jobs, according to Tacke’s records.
And the other half with traditionally higher-paying jobs pull down less than other Idahoans in the same positions, Tacke said. The annual manufacturing wage in Idaho in 1993 was $28,150. In Kootenai County, it was about $26,340.
“What we tend to see here in Kootenai County are manufacturing jobs that are a little less high-tech,” she said. “The earnings for our jobs tend to be lower than in the rest of the state, though we still tend to think of the jobs as high paying.”
Kootenai County has made some progress on wages, based mostly on the success of the construction industry.
Construction pay stands out as the leader in Kootenai County, nearing $16 an hour last year. Fueled by a wave of housing and commercial construction during the last five years, it continues to be a leader in employment growth.
But as with any wave, the construction market is bound to flatten. Already the county’s housing market has begun to moderate, and building permit activity has cooled.
Construction may put more money in your pocket, but manufacturing jobs are unquestionably more secure.
Large companies such as Harpers or Kaiser’s Spokane-area plants attract thousands of job applicants. But the real workhorses in today’s manufacturing economy are the smaller and middle-sized companies that often offer better wages and benefits. Hartford Communications Supply in Hayden employs only 19, but should double in size in the next few years, said owner Gregg Thurman. His company reconditions phone systems and sells them to companies here and in new international markets.
Hartford workers average around $12 an hour, Thurman said, which is above the state average and well above the typical Kootenai County wage. Thurman agrees his jobs are the kind that the county needs and wants.
Bob Potter of Jobs Plus Inc. persuaded Thurman to move his operation here from California.
Potter’s recruiting efforts play heavily in the increases in manufacturing employment in the county, up 11 percent last year from 1993.
Potter must weigh the expectations of job applicants with the realities of corporate recruiting: Not many large companies that pay well with benefits are willing to pull up stakes and relocate.
And when the big fish like Micron swim near with potentially thousands of jobs, the recruiting competition is fierce, costly and time consuming.
So Potter screens the companies he courts carefully. He looks for companies not dependent on being near a large shipping center and small enough where he can speak directly with the manager who makes decisions. Above all, they need to provide decent jobs.
“I don’t want a telemarketing center in here,” he said. “I’m trying to get small to medium-sized companies that make a product that now operate in a high-cost area to come here.”
The big notch in Potter’s recruiting belt remains Harpers, with nearly 600 employees in the large manufacturing site in Post Falls.
Many of Kootenai County’s manufacturing jobs - including some at Harpers - don’t pay significantly better that some service jobs, and that’s where manufacturing jobs lose their luster.
Employment records show that in 1994 Idaho manufacturing wages failed to keep pace or ahead of national wages for the first time in years.
One economic analyst said that continuing to bring in “routine manufacturing” won’t help raise the standard of living for Kootenai County.
Paul Sommers, executive director of the Northwest Policy Center in Seattle, lived in Coeur d’Alene until he was 10. He recently wrote an economic analysis of the area for The Portrait, a report he produces with U.S. Bank in Portland.
“Bringing more manufacturing may be better than more service industry jobs that have low wages, but it won’t bring back the kind of wealth the region generated from mining and timber in the past,” Sommers said. “I have some real long-term worries about that strategy.”
The best kinds of businesses to lure here are the ones on the leading edge of some technology, Sommers said. Businesses with new concepts based on brokering some part of the information-based economy will ultimately lead to the best high-paying jobs, he said.
Potter knows. He said he’d rather recruit more companies such as Cabletron Systems Inc. in Post Falls, which sells connectivity equipment that lets computers talk with other computers around the world.
Companies like Cabletron provide good jobs without needing a lot of space and heavy equipment. That combination makes doing business here more attractive because of the taxes on both equipment and property, he said.
High-tech, high-skill jobs would be great, Potter said, but the labor market here has to be able to serve those companies. A high-tech machining plant would be hard-pressed to find lots of qualified high-tech machinists here.
“We’ve got to match what we’ve got here to what the businesses need,” he said. “It’s getting harder and harder to find people qualified for even entry-level positions here.”
Still, any new manufacturing job that comes into Kootenai County is a plus, Tacke said. While some of the higher-end service-related jobs - ones dealing with banking or computer software, for example - can pay more, anything that provides an opportunity for someone to step out of a service job will aid the economy.
And unlike North Idaho’s woodproducts industry that fluctuates seasonally and cyclically, manufacturing companies tend to provide more stable employment, she said.
“In general, any new manufacturing jobs will end up increasing wages,” she said.