By: Julie White, Executive Director and Mia Guglielmi, Intern

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The North Carolina Metropolitan Mayors Coalition, founded in 2001, is comprised of the mayors of the state’s larger cities, with more than three million citizens.  The Coalition is a non-partisan, mayor-driven organization that focuses on issues of special interest to our large cities in a fast-growing and urbanizing state. The Coalition has worked successfully with federal and state elected officials to promote job creation, protect local revenues, invest in public infrastructure, and keep our cities safe.

   

By: Julie White, Executive Director and Mia Guglielmi, Intern 

Budget Passes in the House, moves on to Senate 

After a very busy week, the House passed their version of the budget (H97) which will now move on to the Senate.  Some notable aspects of the House budget include increasing DMV fees by 30%, a film tax credit of $40m a year, and a renewable energy tax credit extension for two years. Since the Senate has already started work on their budget, they do not anticipate taking as much time as the House did.  However, it is unlikely that many of the House’s tax credits will be included in the Senate’s version.    

H552 Toughens Punishment for Graffiti

For more information on the graffiti bill, check out this story.

H232 Study/Update Bicycle Safety Laws Clears House & Senate

S486 NC Trail Expansion/Economic Corridors Moves to Next Committee

S486 is waiting to be heard in Senate Rules.

Metro Mayors is on Facebook!
Like us on Facebook and stay connected!

The North Carolina Metropolitan Mayors Coalition, founded in 2001, is comprised of the mayors of the state’s larger cities, with more than three million citizens.  The Coalition is a non-partisan, mayor-driven organization that focuses on issues of special interest to our large cities in a fast-growing and urbanizing state. The Coalition has worked successfully with federal and state elected officials to promote job creation, protect local revenues, invest in public infrastructure, and keep our cities safe.

   

For NC workers, pay stays stubbornly flat (WRAL)

RALEIGH, N.C. – For almost two decades, North Carolina workers have opened their paychecks to find not much has changed.

Despite a huge drop in the unemployment rate as the state economy recovers from the recession, economists say take-home pay continues to stagnate, barely keeping pace with modestly rising inflation. That means less prosperity overall, even amid other rising signs of economic health.

In many ways, the problem is a national one. But data show North Carolina’s slow wage growth predates the most recent downturn and has shown a stubborn resistance to respond amid periods of both boom and bust.

It’s an important enough trend to draw the notice of state lawmakers as they continue to discuss ways to spur job growth in both rural and urban areas.

“If you look at income, this state is not divided into rural and urban in terms of our income performance – we’re doing bad everywhere,” Brent Lane, director of the UNC-Chapel Hill Center for Competitive Economies at UNC-Chapel Hill, told a Senate committee in April. “It’s an economic challenge that’s a statewide issue rather than one that can be divided into rural vs. urban.”

A state lagging behind

Lane said income growth for North Carolina workers peaked in 1996 and 1997 amid an economic boom across most of the U.S. At that point, state workers almost matched the average income for the country at above 90 percent. In 1997, the annual average salary nationwide was $25,288; in North Carolina, it was $23,168, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

Since then, growth has stalled.

From 1996 to 2013, both cities and rural areas in the state recorded income growth of only 3.1 percent, Lane said. The rate barely keeps up with inflation and falls behind national income growth of 3.5 percent for cities and 3.9 percent for more rural areas.

The economic downturn certainly didn’t help.

For years, says Duke University finance professor John Graham, the overall workforce has seen a shift from human labor toward machinery. Before the recession though, brand new job sectors could for the most part absorb workers displaced by automation.

“We always worry in any given decade, ‘Oh my goodness, have we finally reached the point where you really don’t need people that much for labor?'” Graham said. “I don’t think we’re there, but what happened during the recession is that companies looked to cut costs in any way they could. That accelerated some of the movement away from labor and toward machines.”

Practically, Graham said, that meant low-income workers were the first casualties of layoffs, forced in many cases into lower paying jobs.

“In a cruel way, it’s hardest on people at the lower end of the wage scale because typically the jobs are more routine,” Graham said. “They could conceivably be replaced by a piece of machinery.”

An uneven recovery

Despite a rash of good economic news for North Carolina over the last few years – rising housing construction, more consumer spending and an unemployment rate of around 5 percent – state lawmakers have taken notice of an uneven distribution of economic prosperity. It’s a conversation made manifest in the debate over the state’s incentive programs, which reward companies for expanding or relocating to the state.

Rural legislators say they want to see more of that money flow to the rural counties that need it most – especially in light of figures that show the majority of the state’s incentive grants and jobs land in populous counties like Wake, Durham and Mecklenburg.

But Lane notes that North Carolina’s urban centers aren’t the “growth engines” they’re often thought to be.

When compared to the rest of the country post-recession through 2013, Lane said the state’s highest ranked metro area by per capita income growth was Charlotte.

The Queen City ranked 120th out of 382 big cities nationwide.

By contrast, Detroit came in at 104, meaning the city that just last year exited bankruptcy saw per capita income grow faster than anywhere in North Carolina.

“Such poor income growth performance challenges the assumption that NC’s cities should be depended on as engines to pull the entire state ahead,” Lane said in an email. “Instead, we must continue to emphasize economic and income policies that support businesses and citizens statewide.”

The goal, Lane said, would be to catch up with the rest of the country in terms of income growth.

Incentives are one tool, Graham said. But he said a longer-term option is an investment in education and training not just in the form of four-year colleges, but specialized and skilled labor that could easily take positions in hi-tech manufacturing.

“If we could have those types of employees, that would encourage companies to come here above and beyond any direct economic incentives,” Graham said.

Changing that demand – more companies competing for more qualified workers – could exert a long-needed upward pressure on pay.

A glimmer of hope, but not for everyone

There are some signs, however, that workers will see wages inch up in the future, Graham said.

His research includes the quarterly Global Business Outlook Survey, which since 1997 has asked company executives about projected hiring and pay. Results from the first quarter of 2015 showed about 70 percent of U.S. companies expected wages to outpace inflation over the next year.

“We finally starting detecting some evidence of labor market pressures,” Graham said. “Whether you want to call that a surprise, I’m not sure, but it’s a surprise in a sense that we’ve been waiting for this and it finally came.”

Graham cautioned, however, that the wage growth isn’t all uniform. Some industries, such as technology, manufacturing and health care, should see wages rise by at least 3 percent. Others, such as energy, media and retail, will see much slower growth.

And although his survey doesn’t examine North Carolina specifically, Graham said companies in the South Atlantic region indicated they expect much lower wage growth that won’t keep up with inflation – meaning more stagnation.

“There’s less labor market pressure in the South Atlantic,” he said. “I don’t want to say that’s pessimistic, but maybe the moderately good thing that looks like it’s starting to happen average across the nation hasn’t kicked in too much in North Carolina.”

A national issue

Even in the areas where expected growth is ticking up, Graham said it’s not as high as economists would like it to be.

And it remains a nationwide issue for officials like Jay Williams, assistant secretary of commerce for the U.S. Economic Development Administration. Like North Carolina leaders, who have been gunning hard for a major automotive plant, Williams said the Obama administration has long seen the expansion of manufacturing as a way forward for wage growth.

“Manufacturing is the most efficient way to increase and spread prosperity to folks in these communities, because on balance across every other segment of the economy, across every educational and skill level, manufacturing jobs pay more,” Williams said in an interview last week. “That is a very effective way to move the needle in terms of wage stagnation.”

Williams spoke last week at the N.C. Tomorrow Summit, a conference focusing on creating future jobs in the state. He also met with state House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, to discuss how the commerce department might support some of the General Assembly’s job creation initiatives.

Williams said state and local governments – even the feds – have a few tools to confront the consistent flatline in pay. But actual solutions will require a multipronged approach.

“There’s no one silver bullet, no one single way to address wage stagnation,” Williams said. “Workforce development, expanded trade opportunities, increase in manufacturing – all those things, collectively, will help drive better opportunity for wage increases.”

(WRAL)

Posted 6:00 a.m. today

Read more at http://www.wral.com/for-nc-workers-pay-stays-stubbornly-flat/14630669/#XzpbMeDDUeedfcq4.99

The North Carolina Metropolitan Mayors Coalition, founded in 2001, is comprised of the mayors of the state’s larger cities, with more than three million citizens.  The Coalition is a non-partisan, mayor-driven organization that focuses on issues of special interest to our large cities in a fast-growing and urbanizing state. The Coalition has worked successfully with federal and state elected officials to promote job creation, protect local revenues, invest in public infrastructure, and keep our cities safe.

   

John Lassiter is joining the chorus of officials calling for the N.C. General Assembly to pass a new incentives bill, which he said is essential to keep the state competitive in the race to lure companies.

Speaking at the Charlotte Rotary Club Tuesday, Lassiter, chairman of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, said the delay is hurting North Carolina’s chance to attract businesses.

“Politics aside, the market is now beginning to say North Carolina is not willing to compete,” said Lassiter, who is a former Charlotte City Council member and president of Carolina Legal Staffing. “You can’t bring an auto plant without (incentives). You can’t bring a corporate headquarters without it.”

Although the state House passed a version of the incentives bill supported by Gov. Pat McCrory that would extend tax reimbursements for companies that relocate to North Carolina, the Senate has its own version. The Senate version would put less money into the tax reimbursements while lowering corporate taxes sharply. The McCrory administration has opposed the Senate bill and urged leaders to pass something closer to the House version.

Lassiter said he’s optimistic the tax credits – considered essential by economic developers – will be passed in the coming weeks. That’s still behind the administration’s timetable: McCrory had hoped for passage in the opening weeks of the legislative session, three months ago.

The partnership Lassiter chairs is a nonprofit that opened last year to take over job recruiting duties from the state Commerce Department. Funded largely with tax dollars and a smaller amount of private donations, the partnership is in charge of marketing North Carolina to businesses around the world.

Lassiter said South Carolina remains a major competitor – and one that uses incentives more freely to attract big manufacturers, such as automakers.

“South Carolina has always been better at promoting and developing manufacturing than North Carolina,” said Lassiter. “They’re not particularly good in the service sector … We’re not going to get into the game where all we want to do is throw money at the manufacturing facilities, but we do need to get into the automobile space.”

(Charlotte Observer)

By Ely Portillo

elyportillo@charlotteobserver.com

Portillo: 704-358-5041;

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/biz-columns-blogs/development/article20286933.html#storylink=cpy