Four-year look at area workers sees wage increases for all

Times aren’t easy for anybody.

Both the private and public sectors are shedding jobs — 66 positions were cut at the city of Vancouver in January, part of the 500 jobs total across Clark County that month.

County unemployment stands at 14.1 percent.

But a four-year snapshot showed that average wages have grown for both public- and private-sector employees in the area.

Between 2005 and 2008 — the last year for which the state has data — both public and privately paid wages grew just over 10 percent, state regional labor economist Scott Bailey said.

In fact, private workers’ wage growth outpaced government employees (not including schoolteachers) slightly in that time: 10.6 percent to 10.2 percent. Statewide, private-sector workers’ wages increased 14.6 percent between 2005 and 2008; public wages went up 13.5 percent.

Of course, just as there’s disparities in who is getting raises at the city of Vancouver, some private-sector jobs are responsible for the bulk of the growth, Bailey said.

Private construction and health-sector wages grew 16 percent in four years. Pay for recreation jobs went up 21 percent, but only to an average salary of $21,590 in 2008.

But judging who is higher paid — the public or private worker — is difficult, he said.

“You really can’t compare private to public, because the occupation mix is very different,” Bailey said. “Overall, the public sector tends to be more professional and office work, as opposed to the private sector, where there’s more personal service, which tends to be lower wage.”

The wage data bear that out: In 2008, the average hourly wage for all jobs in Clark County was $18.45, compared with $28.07 for local government work.

Revenue down, pay up in city

The state does not keep data on individual job categories, making it impossible to track the pay of, say, a janitor working at Walmart versus one working in City Hall, Bailey said.

Leaders of the city’s unions — which represent 70 percent of the 1,100 person work force — point out that their jobs tend to have better benefits and (until recently) better job security.

However, many private workers get bonuses or bigger raises during boom times, they said.

Also, in city government, the salary spread tends to be smaller between top leaders and bottom-tier employees, Vancouver Chief Financial Officer Lloyd Tyler said.

Unions play a large role in capturing good compensation, Bailey said.

“In general, things are better for unionized workers versus nonunionized workers,” he said. “That’s what unions are supposed to do.”

Still, that’s not always the case: city management, which is not unionized, saw higher pay increases from 2004 to 2009 than both police unions.

About 20 percent of Washington state workers are in a union, although that number is not broken down to a private- and public-sector level, Bailey said. Nationwide, just 7 percent of private-sector workers are in unions, while 37 percent of public-sector workers are unionized.

Firefighters’ union President Mark Johnston said he understands why there is resentment from some over city compensation.

“People are bitter because they don’t have a voice in the workplace,” Johnston said. “We should restructure so everybody participating makes a decent living,” instead of just those at the top.

Anecdotally, Tyler said that during boom times, the private sector can be more attractive than government work.

Before the economy went south, “we had struggles in hiring professionals in (information technology) and engineers,” Tyler said.

Instead, “because salaries are not as high, we draw people in with benefits,” said Vancouver Human Resources Director Elizabeth Gotelli. Those costs have exponentially risen — to the tune of more than $11,000 per employee since 1999 — and now, Vancouver employees pay between 10 percent to 15 percent of their insurance premium costs, she said. Other jurisdictions, including Clark County, still pay all benefit costs.

Municipal workers also qualify for state-sponsored retirement plans that sometimes allow them to quit working at a relatively early age. The city has no control over those plans.

Mayor Tim Leavitt, a senior civil engineer with privately owned PBS Engineering + Environmental in Vancouver, said he knows his job pays about the same in the public and private sectors.

He also hasn’t received a cost-of-living or step-level raise in 2½ years, and has seen the quality of his health insurance benefits go down.

The wages of “a person in the public sector doing what I do in the private sector is very comparable,” Leavitt said. “It’s fair to say now that public- and private-sector employees at the rank-and-file and midmanagement levels are comparable.”