The Peoria area lost 2,800 jobs between July 2013 and July 2014, when its percentage of employed people fell 1.6 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics second-quarter report, but the five-county metro area is stable overall, says Bernard Goitein, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Bradley University.
“We’re actually up relative to a year ago,” Dr. Goitein told Community Word.
Both studies are probably correct, yet neither has a key nuance: job quality.
The BLS says the labor force in the metro area (Peoria, Tazewell, Woodford, Stark and Marshall Counties) fell from 197,800 workers in July 2013 to 194,900 workers this July, a 1.4 percent drop. Further, the number of employed people fell from 179,200 a year ago to 176,400 this summer, a decline of 1.6 percent.
Goitein generally agrees but offers a perspective beyond merely jobs.
“We include more than 30 [business] indicators,” he said, “including building permits, sales, openings, homes sold, help-wanted ads (up 9.1 percent), and the number of people working – which includes the self-employed. Our data show the number of working people is actually up.”
“The second quarter 2014 business and economic indicator Summary Index for the Peoria-Pekin Metropolitan Statistical Area was unchanged from the previous quarter’s 96.7 level, maintaining earlier gains to remain 0.7 percent above the previous year’s 96.0,” the report states. “The number of residents who are working provides a broad indicator of conditions in the Peoria-Pekin MSA labor market: a 1.5 percent increase in the number of working residents, for a 1.1 percent increase over the year before.”
However, neither that analysis nor BLS numbers take into account the value of jobs. Reporting the number of jobs that exist, or even the number of employed people, by itself neglects the quality of that employment. When media report on Wall Street, for example, reports don’t confine themselves to the number of corporate stocks available to buy. Whether the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the S&P 500 Index, reports cover the price of those shares: their value.
When the top occupations predicted to grow include fast-food workers, health-care aides, janitors and retail, that’s not the same as good manufacturing or construction jobs that pay middle-class wages with decent benefits and union protections.
Indeed, though the “job market” nationally is reported as improving, wages have been stagnant for at least five years, according to economists polled by the Associated Press, which seems to have just discovered this colossal negative.
More employment being part-time or temporary, too many job applicants for employers to compete for good workers with better wages, and less movement into startup companies or from less-attractive jobs all combine to have flattened wages since at least 2009, the AP reported.
Goitein concedes that job weaknesses remain in the Peoria area.
“The two biggest sectors here are health care and manufacturing,” he said. “Health care was essentially unchanged, but manufacturing was down.”
Interestingly, however, Goitein pointed to the greater availability of health-insurance coverage like the Affordable Care Act becoming an advantage to workers, especially the self-employed.
“Dr. Gareth Olds of the Harvard Business School reports that access to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) had ‘a significant positive effect on entrepreneurship. The program increased the self-employment rate by 23 percent among eligible households compared with non-eligible households. The rate of new business births rose by 13 percent among households that qualified for SCHIP. The survival rate of new businesses rose by 8 percent’.”
Such benefits add to jobs’ quality, and that value adds meaning to numbers.