Anne Higbie operates a cash register at her job in a beauty supply company. She, like many others in the area, have found employment at retail jobs.
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With few job options, potential employees set sights elsewhere
By Breanna Christensen
christbl@uwec.edu
Coloring specialist Anne Higbie had the perfect job at Rocco Altobelli in Edina, Minn., with “incredible pay, amazing training and great benefits.”
For Higbie, moving from her wonderful job in Edina to Eau Claire after meeting her husband was more difficult than imagined.
When Higbie called local salons to find a coloring position, she learned that her position wasn’t available anywhere in the area nor would a local salon create a position for her.
“I was shocked that I couldn’t just do the chemical part of it,” Higbie said. “They told me I couldn’t do just color. I’d have to do hair or nails, and I haven’t done that since school.”
Higbie quickly found that jobs in Eau Claire aren’t the same as jobs in surrounding areas, and she was forced to find employment in unrelated jobs because Eau Claire did not offer a position with her level of specialization. Higbie was surprised because in law or medicine, specialization is preferred to a general practitioner, but not here, Higbie said.
Employees in most jobs have challenges when working in the Chippewa Valley. Even though Eau Claire ranks in the top in the country for healthiest counties and safest areas, the Eau Claire metropolitan area is ranked last for average earnings, department chair of economics Ed Young said. In addition to low earnings, job options are low in the area because of the limited economic diversity.
These factors all contribute to the steady flow of people away from the Chippewa Valley into areas such as Madison, Minnesota and Illinois. There are options for people like Higbie and development experts are working to provide area residents with greater opportunities for work, such as local job centers, but the challenges are still present.
Not enough money
In 2004, the Eau Claire area ranked one-third of all metropolitan areas in the nation based on its average earnings. Each worker earned an average of $29,000 per year, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. This meant that Eau Claire was 9th out of nine areas for average personal income in Wisconsin.
Young has studied average earnings since 1989.
Eau Claire has been last in the pool, Young said. He was surprised to see that Eau Claire was last on the list because he thought that most people were suffering from an illusion about their earnings.
“I thought their perspective was clouded so I started looking at various sources of data and income and earnings,” Young said. “And it was true…In every category you wanted to be high, we were low and in every category you wanted to be low, like poverty, we were high.”
There were two reasons for Eau Claire being at the bottom of the list in the earning categories, Young said. In looking at incomes, Young and the researchers said that either there is a bad workforce with low education or there are bad jobs, both of which could contribute to low income in the area.
When researchers found that education levels in the Eau Claire area were typical, they began looking at the jobs available in the area. Eau Claire's large number of retail jobs drives down the average earnings, Young said.
Higbie learned the hard way that retail doesn’t pay. After looking at every salon in the area, Higbie turned to a related job as an associate for a beauty supply company.
“I worked for $8 an hour,” the 39-year-old Higbie said. “This was income price difference in earnings, and I knew I was going to make an adjustment living with my in-laws. We couldn’t have made it if we had to pay a mortgage.”
In fields where earnings are typically higher, such as the medical industry, Young noticed that earnings were not what they should have been either.
“Our healthcare workers are paid less, on average, than other MSAs (Metropolitan Surrounding Areas),” Young said.
Since then community members in healthcare have told Young that medical costs in Eau Claire are higher and more workers are employed as home health aides or nursing home assistants.
The more recent trend in research that Young and his researchers have studied is Eau Claire’s large rural population and the influence it has on Eau Claire’s average earnings.
“Where if you think of the Eau Claire MSA, we have Eau Claire and Chippewa counties there’s large rural sections where there’s agricultural workers that typically have lower average pay,” Young said. “So they pull down the average.”
Whether it is because of a large rural population or limited job possibilities, students and employees are paying attention to wages and many of them choose to move to other cities.