Newsday (Melville, New York), September 4, 2006, Monday

Copyright 2006 Newsday
Newsday (Melville, New York)

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News

September 4, 2006 Monday

SECTION: BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS

HEADLINE: It's a mixed bag for employees

BYLINE: Carrie Mason-Draffen, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

BODY:
Sep. 4--A group of surveys paint a mixed picture for workers this Labor Day in New York.
Wages are up because of worker shortages in certain sectors, but so are job security concerns. And inflation continues to eat into wage gains.
Pearl Kamer, Long Island Association's chief economist, said because of worker shortages in skilled professions like nursing and engineering, job applicants "can pretty well write their own ticket."
And she emphasized that Long Island, with a 4.4 percent unemployment rate, has "full employment."
"Most workers who want a job can find one," she said.
But workers here still face high taxes and high energy costs at a time when the labor market growth overall is slow, Kamer said.
The monthly Hudson Employment Index for New York City registered a one-half percentage point rise in employee confidence in August, to 90.9 percent. That's the highest for the year so far, according to Hudson Highland Group, the Manhattan-based staffing company that publishes the index. The number tracks such things as workers' views on finances, job prospects and job security.
Falling energy prices and the Federal Reserve Board's pause in interest rate hikes are driving the rosier outlook, said Shane Hill, a Hudson senior vice president based in Raleigh, N.C. He said that in strong sectors like health care, accounting and financial services, workers have received wage increases, on average, every seven to nine months.
But job-security concerns pulled the Hudson index down. Twenty-two percent of the respondents in August said they were worried about losing their job, up from 21 percent in July. That underscores a fundamental shift among employers who increasingly don't guarantee lifetime employment because they "just can't be competitive in the global market anymore," said Bradford Bell of Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
But some surveys show New Yorkers losing ground. From 2002 to 2005, real wages in New York State, adjusted for inflation, fell by 3.6 percent, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute in Albany.
Also, employees are working harder. Between 2000 and 2005, productivity rose 9.5 percent, while inflation-adjusted wages during that period rose by just 1.6 percent.
"There's a need to make sure that prosperity is broadly shared," said James Parrott, the group's chief economist.
Staff writer Randi F. Marshall contributed to this story.
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