Labor market getting tighter
ATLANTA — To hire 10 to 15 project coordinators this year, Sabre Commercial Inc. has boosted pay 10 percent and added a 401(k) retirement plan.
“It is an employee’s market,” said John Cyrier, cofounder and president of the 48-employee Austin, Texas-based builder. “We are definitely seeing a labor shortage in Austin and central Texas. I see it only getting worse.”
Companies across the U. S. from Texas to Virginia and Nebraska are struggling to fill positions with metropolitan jobless rates below the 5.2 percent to 5.6 percent level the Federal Reserve now regards as full employment nationally .
hile that compares to 8.4 percent currently for Greater Memphis, in other cities the competition for workers is prompting businesses to raise wages, increase hours for current employees, add benefits and recruit from other regions.
“There are spot labor shortages” that probably will “broaden out over the next year as the job market steadily improves,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pa.
Unemployment in Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos was 4.8 percent in February, Labor Department figures show. Forty-nine, or 13 percent, of the 372 metro areas reported jobless rates below 5 percent that month, the most for February since 2008, two months after the start of the recession. The lowest was 2.8 percent in Houma-Bayou CaneThibodaux, La., because of offshore oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico.
Four years ago, during the worst of the labor-market slump, just two cities had rates below 5 percent.
“That says the economy is getting better in a lot of places,” said David Wiczer, labor-market economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. While national unemployment is a closely watched indicator, “it is difficult to average things.”
The latest Fed Beige Book review of regional economic conditions highlighted the pinch, with six of the 12 districts — Dallas, New York, Cleveland, Richmond, Chicago and Kansas City — reporting difficulty finding skilled workers.