Robust hiring continues momentum
But policymakers frustrated by stubbornly slow pace of wage increases
WASHINGTON — Asthe nation’s post-recession recovery turned into a long-running economic expansion, policymakers had hoped wages would start to boom once laid-off workers found jobs. With workers in shorter supply, they argued, companies would start offering raises to attract new employees and keep their current ones.
But as the unemployment rate has dipped to a 17-yearlow of 4.1 percent and companies nationwide struggle to fill vacancies, workers aren’t seeing the pay hikes that were supposed to come with what analysts call the strongest labor market in two decades.
Statewide unemployment rates for November, including those for Nevada, are typically released later in the month. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for Nevada in October was 5 percent.
“People are finding jobs more quickly and easily,” said Jason Furman, an economics professor at Harvard University and former Obama Administration official. “They’re more confidently quitting their jobs to find another. Everything with the way people are behaving is consistent with the strength in the labor market. But wages just aren’t picking up the way we thought they would.” Workers’ average hourly
JOBS
impossible to pull off. Among them:
Weili Dai and Sehat Sutardja, the ousted founders of Marvell Technology Group in Silicon Valley, bought 241 units in Loft 5 last year for $51.5 million. The 272-unit complex, at 2715 W. Pebble Road, is a mile from Boca Raton.
In 2013, a consortium bought almost 1,300 units in five Las Vegas projects — The Ogden, Juhl, One Las Vegas, Loft 5 and Spanish Palms — for $237 million combined.
Northcap founder John Tippins, who was part of that investor group, said he has tried on and off for maybe two years to buy Boca Raton’s remaining units and is still interested in them.
He figured a buyer would get the condos for less than it cost to build them. He also noted that competition isn’t growing, as no one is building the sort of luxury condo projects that were all too common here during the bubble era.
Big sales, Big drop
Boca Raton was designed to have four buildings with 756 units total. Developer Jerry Peterson broke ground in 2004 and opened the first two buildings in 2007.
Buyers closed escrow on around 160 units during 2007, but sales plunged the next year and stopped altogether by 2009, Clark County records indicate.
It wasn’t the only project in which sales flopped with the economy. Developers of Sky Las Vegas, a north Strip condo tower, sold more than 290 units in 2007 but just two in 2008, county records indicate.
Litigation was all too common after the market crashed, and Boca Raton wasn’t spared. Jpmorgan Chase Bank sued the project’s development company in 2010, alleging it defaulted on a $126.6 million construction loan.
A judge appointed a receiver to take charge of Boca Raton, but Chase sold the loan, and the receivership ended in 2011, court records show.
Olthuis said he was part of the group that bought the loan on the property.
Peterson, now with commercial-mortgage brokerage Northmarq Capital, said Friday in a joint phone interview with Olthuis that the other two buildings at Boca Raton weren’t constructed because the market crashed.
He declined to comment on the Chase lawsuit and said he no longer holds a stake in the condos.
“Everybody got nailed in that time,” he said.
But the hard hats might return. Olthuis’ group still owns almost 7 acres of land next to Boca Raton’s two buildings, and he said they are planning to build around 300 apartments there.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.