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Beeker, You keep missing I've viewing mfg as one sector to be sought, not the only level needed as it was 40 years ago. But ignoring any sector (and since Ct has ignored it, it creates an unfavorable variance vs states that do not avoid adding said sector).
Our ex terrific governor was great at understanding this, and we added tremendous amounts of jobs in technology, as well as mfg, as well as corp hq. If we had missed any of that trio, our job creation record would have far poorer. Its a buffet, take some of everything. To do it requires a good business atmostphere, and that means, a bottom line good atmostphere.
You keep on touting TN's business climate, but honestly I see nothing special. Worse paying jobs, less job security, worse unemployment, worse benefits, not all that terrific job growth in numbers or percentages, what seems like an awful entrepreneurial climate, regressive taxes on small employers and individuals, and best of all it does this on the government dole (TN is a net receiver of Federal Funds, paying for a huge part of its' budget year after year).
Why do you hate all those people in CT that picked themselves by their bootstraps and strike out on their own? Are they not important because they aren't under the direct employ of another? Lol
Beeker, Relative to COL, our average pay (nashville metro, and especially for the educated) is superb. You are aware COL ratio is about 70% US average, US is 80% US avg. Are you aware Nashville metro was named Relocation City of Nation 2x in 10 years, top 5 2 other years. No other city received that many top 5s. The world has changed, and as Forbes correctly showed their is a northern brain drain, with a Southern gain. EVERY top 10 city is not either north or on a coast, execpt San Diego.
Our ex gov relocated 31 corps to the tune of 150k direct jobs created inside a ten year span. Try matching 10% of that. The Ct Economic Development Team would say "No Mas". They can't even keep UBS, let alone gain stuff. This includes Nissan North American hq, with a median salary of 140k. My employers facilities also have a median well in excess of US median, despite far lower cost, and our headcount across the RTW states is very high. As for job security, I last spent a day without a ever higher paying job with larger bonuses and benefits in Ct. That was in the 90s. Here, my biggest problem is headhunters calling too often, and I have no desire to move on.
But again, its not just Nashville. Its the South gaining, the north losing, and every census equals more Southern, RTW electoral votes. 7 gained this time alone.
Job Security is non-existent in the private sector in Ct. UBS is down 1,000 since its peak.All the insurers cut heads; UTC has cut heads. Wal Mart has reached the upper levels of Ct employment, and yes, those jobs will last. I have just a few relatives who have not fled Ct; all have degrees (some Masters), and all are either unemployed or in retail making under $10 per hour. Now if you want to gloat over Ct's employment picture circa 1975, you'd have a valid point.
Beeker:"Look at how many of our high school students are able and willing to pursue post-secondary education."
5 years later, They will move South. Thanks for spending YOUR money training OUR talent. Our top execs, BTW, are mainly Northeast Transplants. Your TAX dollars at work.
Sigh, the problem is that it HAS been worse in those low cost areas. Even before the financial crash of 2008 real terms from childhood food insecurity, unemployment, health care coverage, personal leverage in housing and non secured debt, investment rates, and yes income has been anemic at best for huge swaths of the country. In fact if you look at these figures the areas that fared the worst are the exact ones you're putting on a pedestal. MA, CA, NY, MT, some residents in TX, and CT did better in real terms this generation than generations before. That was not the case for states like GA, SC, TN, KS. The "growth" of jobs was largely trumpeted but lacked substance for these regions resulting in it being much harder for natives in the area to advance.
So how would I go about looking up information that supports your assertion?
I don't like the economy much anywhere, so I have no pedestals. But I am pretty certain CT is not competitive at this point in time.
Quote:
As for cost of living: like you said, cost is pretty much lower in almost all locales nationally. But there is the fact that starting salaries would be much lower as well which would be a huge equalizer...
My profession is one where job openings may exist all over the country. Comparable positions do pay more in a place like CT but -- not enough more to fully cover the higher cost of living. So in my experience, you can generally do better financially if you work in a lower cost location.
[quote=mlassoff;19670913]No, but, again, not for solely the reasons that you state...
This is essentially why Connecticut needs to attract new economy businesses that offer better opportunity, pay better and lead to growth. I really think it's bizarre to think that traditional manufacturing is the way back when dependence on it (coupled with the perfect storm of outsourcing and higher labor cost here) is what led us here in the first place.
New economy businesses have more professional workers and fewer unskilled labor jobs. They pay well, and are exactly what will keep students in the area.
Connecticut, with its educated populace, leading Universities, and location in the BOS-NY-WAS corridor is perfectly situated for this type of growth...
The following comments represent my opinion, based upon observation, and seventeen years as a CT resident, no longer in CT. If you've had different circumstances, you will have a different set of observations, so YMMV.
mlassoff, my good man, what is this "new economy" of which you speak? "Clean" computer work? Pharma? Pfizer is leaving New London as we speak, and I don't think new pharma operates under a different business model. Research? Needs a critical mass of like thinkers to refine methods and reasoning, that's why good universities are so productive. The Yale model has matured, it is not going to take off in a growth spurt. Tech design and development? Can be done anywhere there is a critical mass - not so much in CT. If CT is competing with places that are lower cost, and already have a critical mass of like minded people to promote vitality in the exchange of ideas, it is playing catch up. CT lost in the rush to the market for the "new economy".
We've already seen that work needing only a computer and a desk will go to the most profitable place. It will be offshored, or go to a RTW, low cost state where it will have a critical mass of US companies, which in total attract workers, and become an employment hub. Young people will flock there because it reduces their employment risk - if they get laid off one place, they can walk across the street to the next. If you think this CT generation is blind to the unemployment agonies suffered by its CT parents, you are wrong. They have seen the consequences of being forced into a game of musical chairs with declining jobs, and won't take that road if they have ANY other choice.
Your "new economy" businesses must be enticed to CT, and then anchored with state subsidies and free rent. Once those are yanked, they will make better money in a RTW, low cost state. They may stay here UNTIL the subsidy teat runs dry. Then they will vamoose. CT will have been had. As for finding them here and giving them a leg up - fact is, most people are wired to be employees, not entrepreneurs. Just not enough home grown entrepreneurs who also have leading edge bio, mechanical, engineering or other "new economy" wiring, to make that "new economy" thang bootstrap strictly from within.
I suggest a thought experiment. Think like a business owner, like a corporation, or like a new grad starting out.
The states to which the companies, and the grads, are fleeing - they don't NEED the subsidized support services of which you speak. It is enough for them to avoid the CT utility costs, gas taxes, heating oil bills, taxation, inspections to seek, permissions to court, forms to submit. It would be an act of malfeasance for a Board of Directors to willingly locate to CT, to a regulatory and cost structure that beggars their shareholders FOREVER. Their actions would not withstand the scrutiny of a shareholder lawsuit. It is a tad naive to shout "WE ARE THE BEST", when by at least one important measure CT is not. Further, other states have the benefits you mention, but at lower cost. (I'm not going to buy a claim that CT has the only good schools in the country).
About those grads...Realistically, it is small inconvenience to pack their cars with their belongings and drive to ?Columbia, ?Seattle or ?Austin, for the likelihood of a decent job. it's virtually a rite of passage, with a quantifiable benefit - with a LOT of companies in an employment hub, the grad's skill set is portable to the company across the street should he be laid off. By comparison, the CT grad, should he stay there, signs up for a 30 year long game of musical chairs. They figger they might as well skip the prolonged layoffs and job hunts and GO WHERE THE JOBS ARE TO BEGIN WITH. They are right to spare themselves the agony of prolonged bouts of joblessness. Possibly, once they have a cushion down the road, they will return, possibly for the same reasons you did.
For the corporations, it's a no brainer as well.
"Let's see. Locate in a RTW employment hub, where the grads come to me on their own dime? Or in CT, the most litigious state in the country, where I take a 60% hit in operating costs right out of the starting gate, a place that graduates leave, and where the rest of the workers are there because they can't sell their houses...Hard choice..."
Your plan might work if we still had the divine right of kings. COMPANIES MUST COME HERE, BUT ONCE THEY ARE HERE THEY ARE NOT PERMITTED TO LEAVE. CT as the Hotel California, as it were. But you'd then have the problem of personnel mobility. You'd have to make sure the workers balanced out with the jobs in a given area. By instituting an "identification papers" requirement for all new grads, maybe? Papers have to be properly stamped before you can cross a county line? You know, like what the former Soviet Bloc used to do. "No papers? No soup for you! Off to the cell block you go!" A capitalist's dream?
I am playing, of course. But, esteemed colleague, THAT IS THE KIND OF IMPRISONMENT IT WOULD TAKE TO KEEP THE COMPANIES, AND THE GRADS THERE IF THEY DON'T WANT TO BE THERE. BY VOTING WITH THEIR FEET, THEY SAY THEY DON'T WANT TO BE THERE. I know in my own case, once I had come to the decision to leave, it would have taken incarceration to make me stay.
It sounds like you moved from Austin for other than business reasons, to take care of your parents maybe. If so, that's an honorable choice, and it is to your credit. In this society, though, I don't see that social good has much to do with economic profit. Business decisions are dictated by economic profit and constrained only by laws and regulations, and only then if there's a meaningful penalty that they can't wiggle out of! They may write platitudes about social good in their marketing pieces, but anybody who acts along those lines to the detriment of profitability is marginalized pretty quickly. Unless they get an allowance for doing it (like the "Work Life Balance Director", a recemt innovation). And then they get smacked if they exceed their allowance.
Sheesh. I always wind up with such long posts, but some matters cannot be discussed with bullet points and sound bytes. My apologies, but I don't think CT is coming back on a wave of new economy, on a renewed real estate bubble, on a wave of increased taxation to encourage home grown entrepreneurship, or for that matter on any wave whatsoever. As the man sez, the rent is too d*mn high.
Great post, Jane Smith. I am in the same boat, as were dozens of my relatives who made up a small part of the 250k Ct migration out decade. Imprisonment is the only thing that would have altered our decisions. It was not a matter of stay or go, it was where to relo. I looked at several regions, and relocated to Nashville. Unemployment rate here at that time (late 90s) was below the national average by more than 3/4 point (no small feat with nat'l under 4). It stayed below 5 for the next 10 years, with few months above it. Even now, we're below state avg, and relocating approximately 1,500 jobs into Metro, with another 1,000 plus plant expansion jobs being created. That pattern can be found all across the low cost states. As we get out of the recession, the gains will be disproportinately where costs are moderate or outright low.
And yes, any corp who went into a high cost state w/o subsidies fully offsetting the cost gap and than some (to the tune of UBS subsidy rate) would be sued by its shareholders. Recognize the analysts would severely downgrade UTC were it to abandon the ABC strategy. Why-P-R-O-F-I-T? N othing else matters to a publicly traded corp, and its board. Nor should anything else matter. That is their fiduciary duty.
Elequent post, Jane-Smith. Yours are always excellent, but that one is above even your norm.
And yes, tending to family even if it means losing out economically is a very honorable choice. I'm not sure most people would, but I'm always glad some do.
You keep on touting TN's business climate, but honestly I see nothing special. Worse paying jobs, less job security, worse unemployment, worse benefits, not all that terrific job growth in numbers or percentages, what seems like an awful entrepreneurial climate, regressive taxes on small employers and individuals, and best of all it does this on the government dole (TN is a net receiver of Federal Funds, paying for a huge part of its' budget year after year).
Why do you hate all those people in CT that picked themselves by their bootstraps and strike out on their own? Are they not important because they aren't under the direct employ of another? Lol
~Cheers
Oh, c'mon Beeker. We know that as a unionized state employee you are paid to hype CT lest more taxpayers leave for greener pastures. But the broad brush characterization concerning TN may not be all that. Worse everything? Who do you think you're kidding? OK, Memphis is a dangerous town with a storied reputation for violence, and no doubt your broad brush applies. But Nashville is doing better on many of those indicators than the typical town in CT. It has the added benefit that the median house price is $146K. That is, you can make your mortgage payment while on unemployment. Try doing that with one of your $450K median priced CT shacks. (Disclosure: I fo not live in TN.)
Lower cost of living is not to be disparaged. The equation simply does not shake out in the manner you claim, which is, a little less for housing and a lot less for wages. Entry level jobz (the ones that haven't been outsourced) are distributed nationwide, and their salaries are well characterized by area in many data bases. You can find out what the average salary is for an entry level job in a particular area by looking it up on "salary dot com", for instance. Regional differences vary by no more than 20%. So, the TN pay rate is may be 20% less, but the cost of housing is 66% less. That takes a LOT of stress out of life.
You can find average rent prices on a number of data bases as well. One is patrick dot net.
Thus, please don't be invoking the boogey man in an attempt to scare folks into staying in CT like good little tax slaves!
These are stressful times, but they are more vastly more stressful in high cost places. Getting wiped out is a reality for a number of folks, even amongst those of my highly educated acquaintance on the Gold Coast. Get wiped out in CT, even ditching your mortgage albatross leaves you with all of those other baked in costs. Get wiped out in Nashville, you can live to fight another day.
The boogey man is not held at bay in the great unknown, beyond state lines. It is right up close and personal.
And yes, any corp who went into a high cost state w/o subsidies fully offsetting the cost gap and than some (to the tune of UBS subsidy rate) would be sued by its shareholders. Recognize the analysts would severely downgrade UTC were it to abandon the ABC strategy. Why-P-R-O-F-I-T? N othing else matters to a publicly traded corp, and its board. Nor should anything else matter. That is their fiduciary duty.
While I actually don't completely disagree with this (housing costs and taxes do make some amount of difference, and Jane's point about Pfizer is a very good one I hadn't thought of), where does it end? Where does the line get drawn? Do you really believe that if there were no "regulation" at all (to take an ultimate extreme lets assume no minimum wage or child labor laws) that there wouldn't be kids in factories or people making 25c/hour and living on the street even though they are "working hard"? While I don't think we'd be a society of complete "explotation" I don't think "the market" would simply solve 99% of the problem either. And please don't tell me as you did before "that is settled law"......75-100 years ago these same arguments as in this forum were being used against those laws.
Yes, without any "profit incentive" there would be no innovation in business and society and we'd have an even worse economic situation similar to the old Soviet Union of the 1970s and 80s, but 100% "survival of the fittest" produces too much societal "collateral damage". Yes, more "laissez faire" than "regulation" is the best way, but you need just enough "regulation" to protect those who can't protect themselves.
As a 22 year 2010 college grad, I actually have not heard any of my friends complaining about high cost in CT. More friends and acquaintances have left simply because we don't have good cities, and therefore nowhere to find a relationship. Assuming I'm still single when I graduate med school in 2014, I'll be leaving for the same reason. The vast majority of people I know have left (mainly to Boston) because they found jobs elsewhere. Lots of kids from CT go out-of-state for college, and stay out once they graduate.
Also, I am pretty sensitive to lifestyle and environment issues. I definitely don't want to be trapped in a car all the time, so I'll be moving to a more walkable/transit-friendly city.
CT is just not a very young person friendly state. Most of the cities are basically ghettoes except for parts of New Haven, and the suburbs are not supportive of young single people (look at West Hartford's weird laws, for instance). I'm really not sure how many people are doing the complicated cost equations you guys are arguing over.
As a 22 year 2010 college grad, I actually have not heard any of my friends complaining about high cost in CT. More friends and acquaintances have left simply because we don't have good cities, and therefore nowhere to find a relationship. Assuming I'm still single when I graduate med school in 2014, I'll be leaving for the same reason. The vast majority of people I know have left (mainly to Boston) because they found jobs elsewhere. Lots of kids from CT go out-of-state for college, and stay out once they graduate.
Also, I am pretty sensitive to lifestyle and environment issues. I definitely don't want to be trapped in a car all the time, so I'll be moving to a more walkable/transit-friendly city.
CT is just not a very young person friendly state. Most of the cities are basically ghettoes except for parts of New Haven, and the suburbs are not supportive of young single people (look at West Hartford's weird laws, for instance). I'm really not sure how many people are doing the complicated cost equations you guys are arguing over.
I completly agree with this. I'm going into my senior year this fall and the reason I don't find CT appealing is the lack of a real city experience. While CT cities do have nice parts, none of them are cities I would consider living in. However, CT does have some beautiful suburbs and rural areas that are great places to raise a family.
I think what it really comes down to is most young adults/professionals are looking for an exciting, walkable city and CT just does not have one. It then becomes a cost issue, is it worth paying so much to live in CT when there is no real destination? If you dont particularly enjoy suburb or rural living then why stay?
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