Readers of the Flagpole will recognize this post as an expanded snippet from a longer piece that ran in last week’s paper. It represents an attempt to expand Cobbloviate’s coverage of local affairs. Along those lines, local weather junkies might check out this site with the understanding that the readings originate from the old Bloviator’s backyard and thus may reflect a persistent and unusually high concentration of hot air.
Much, although perhaps still not enough, has been said about the economic disparities that lurk beneath the serene and appealing surface of this community where the percentage of people living in poverty is actually more than 40 percent higher than the state average but unemployment is roughly 20 percent below the statewide mean. Incongruous as it may seem, the “working poor” are often a sizable presence in college towns, where universities and other employers need little bait on the hooks they dangle into a captive pool of faculty and student spouses and an assortment of hangers-on addicted to the local lifestyle and ambience. Anyone who imagines that education-oriented university communities are insulated from the vulgar realities of supply and demand need only consider that, according to the last full accounting I can find, on average, only 22 of Georgia’s 159 counties pay their teachers less than Clarke County does. I doubt it will make local teachers feel any better, but they are hardly the only white-collar casualties of a local economy brimming with highly educated job-seekers. For example, paralegals and legal assistants in these parts also seem to be coming up more than $4000 shy of the state average.
Given the drag effect of large numbers of relatively low-paying university staff jobs and the relatively high concentration of private employment in the low end of the service sector, it’s hardly surprising that only in Valdosta are Georgia’s metropolitan area production workers likely to earn less than they do here. That said, at $12.04 per hour, a typical such local worker is positively in the chips compared to a local cashier making $7.57 per hour. Clearly, our need here is not so much more employment opportunities but better ones that will ultimately pull local wage scales up rather than hold them down. Unfortunately, however, such jobs are most likely to be found in manufacturing, and needless to say, are far from plentiful in these days of oversized executive salaries and downsized factory payrolls. This story suggests that we are looking at perhaps 1,700 new jobs next year, but the way I read “During the past three months, hiring was fastest in Athens in the sectors of professional and business services (300 jobs) and leisure and hospitality (310 jobs),” is that most of the folks who fill these new positions will be bringing home paychecks that look more like a cashier’s than production worker’s. In all likelihood, the same could be said of most places around this great land of ours, but I guess it doesn’t hurt for those of us who think that heaven might be a bit of a come-down compared to Athens to be reminded that the price of enjoying it is a lot steeper for some than for others.
