STOCK QUOTES     More market data...

Jobless find new work, not old standard of living

By Shirleen Holt
Seattle Times business reporter

HARLEY SOLTES / THE SEATTLE TIMES Trent Burks earned $24 an hour as a painter at Boeing. After being laid off, he returned to school under a federal job-retraining program. He's now an electrician, earning $14 an hour.

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

But like thousands of other Boeing workers, Burks lost his job in December of 2001. And like thousands of others, he returned to school, got retrained and found a job that pays a fraction of what he used to earn.

"Believe me, it's a struggle," said Burks, 42, who now earns $14 an hour as an electrician. "We live paycheck to paycheck."

Burks is one of Washington's jobless who made his way back into the work force, which grew again in June, although more slowly than in previous months.

Washington added 1,600 nonseasonal jobs last month, according to figures released by the state Employment Security Department yesterday. The gains were significantly below the combined 15,600 positions added in March and April but enough to keep the economic recovery rolling.

The state's unemployment rate held steady at 6.1 percent, still higher than the national rate of 5.6 percent for June, but down from 7.7 percent a year ago.

On one hand, Burks could count himself lucky — he's working again.

On the other hand, he and other laid-off workers are finding it hard to recoup the salaries they earned before the recession hit in January of 2001.

Except for the booming construction industry, high-wage jobs are returning more slowly than those on the lower end of the pay spectrum, according to figures collected by the state.

In 2003, the last full calendar year analyzed, jobs paying less than $20 an hour grew to 61 percent of all new jobs created in Washington, up from 57 percent in 2002.

By contrast, new jobs paying more than $20 an hour dropped to 39 percent from 43 percent.

"This is typical of a serious recession," said Roberta Pauer, a regional economist for the state.

"In recessions, the two highest-wage sectors of the economy always show the highest layoffs. And those two sectors would be construction and manufacturing," Pauer said.

Low interest rates have buoyed the construction industry, which has recovered all the jobs lost during the recession and added 1,200 more.

But Washington has yet to recoup the 68,000 manufacturing jobs lost since January 2001, and their average $51,000-a-year salaries.

Instead, the state is seeing growth in a myriad of medium- to lower-paying industries: hospitality, finance, retail, certain segments of health care, business services.

Employment services, a category that includes temp workers, grew especially fast since December — 14.3 percent — according to regional economist Scott Bailey. The average pay in that industry is $27,276 a year.

King County's dislocated-worker program, which retrains people for jobs in growing industries, has found its participants earned an average $34,755 before retraining and $29,194 after.

Burks has watched his annual income drop from around $50,000 at Boeing, not counting overtime, to less than $30,000 at his current job installing fire and burglar alarms for a security company.

He chose this field because he'd heard he could make $19 an hour.

But after graduating from a technical college in 2002, an education paid by the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance program, he learned it was customary for nonunion rookies like himself to earn anywhere from $10 to $12 an hour.

In the two-plus years since he lost his Boeing job, Burks has eaten through his $10,000 savings and $7,000 retirement fund just to make ends meet.

He and his wife haven't taken a vacation in six years, first because Burks was working, then because he wasn't, and now because they simply can't afford it.

"Every time we get two nickels to rub together, something comes up."

Shirleen Holt: 206-464-8316 or sholt@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

E-mail this article

Print this article

Search archive

More business & technology headlines...