Blowing it on a hired hand;
The Sioux Falls Development Foundation just hired Lon Clemensen as the new Vice President of Workforce Development. With 30 years of experience in Human Resource management, Clemensen feels he can help fill that worker shortage.
“My plan is to work with education groups, government groups, social services, non-profits and business leaders to talk about those challenges,” Clemensen said.
Great! That’s all we need is another hired gun to tell us what we are doing wrong. And the advice he gives?
Clemensen says Sioux Falls has competitive wages, but the city’s quality of life is the biggest selling point.
LOL. Sure they are competitive, if you are trying to decide whether you want to work at Taco Johns or McDonalds.
“I believe if we get them into the city, show them around and show them all the attributes that we have in the city that’s a major factor,” Clemensen said. “Probably even larger than wages.”
Yeah, try to hide our dirty little secret, low wages. I’m no economist, but it seems people who make a living wage tend have a better quality of life (because they can actually buy things which contributes to our economy).
South Dakota ranks 48 (out of 51) for average salary ($29,420) and when adjusted for cost of living we rank 43 ($33,356). But hey, we don’t have a ‘wage problem’ (this information appears to be from 2014).
Maybe he should hold his ‘family day’ idea in the parking lot of Feeding South Dakota. If it rains there is plenty of room to hold the festivities inside the building, they will just have to rearrange the 40 thousand pounds of mac and cheese.
Labor will be met because jobs will be exiting rapidly. Looks good for a recruiter and politicians.
Nobody seems to notice retail and commerce has slowed. City revenue is sales tax. It’s easy to build going up but a crash is unpredictable and devastating. At this point overbuilding and unreal optimism will cause a crisis by next spring. City revenue will hardly make bond payments.
Oh, let us give them the benefit of the doubt, shall we? From best I can tell, their strategy is to lure businesses into Sioux Falls without letting them know about our very low unemployment rate; and how it means literally that we do not have enough workers for all of the jobs. Then, once these new businesses have established themselves in Sioux Falls, they will then be forced to raise their wages to compete for the finite workers pool and everything will be great.
It is an ingenious plot for the sake of the workers, I must add. “Trickle-down” it may be, but it is only a matter of time before it could work one would think ( 😉 )….. You would also think it is merely a question of how many more “pounds of mac and cheese” will be needed in our town until this strategy eventually bears fruit?… Wouldn’t you think? 😉