Inflation pay helps North Texas workers keep up with rising costs
FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) — While rising costs continue to eat at our wallets, some North Texas counties and businesses are paying their employees more with inflation pay.
The Dallas County Commissioners Court on Tuesday decided to dish out $40 million from the Federal American Rescue Plan to pay each of its full time employees $6,000.
In Tarrant County, they are paying its full time employees $4,900 more in an effort to fight off inflation as prices continue to increase.
The increases in both counties will happen in three installments until the end of the year.
"We want to have a strong workforce, we want to have people that stay with Dallas County. That's important; you spend a lot of money training employees you don't want to lose a good employee over pay," said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, "We need to be able to keep our employees up with the cost of things with inflation. If we don't do that, our employees are actually making less money each year."
But it's not just government employees seeing a bump in pay – some small businesses are also giving workers a boost.
"They need a raise because everything has gone through the roof. Rent's up, food costs up, gas is up," said Hysen Lushaj, owner and operator of Nizza Pizza in Fort Worth, "You know when you work with everybody, we're a mom and pop operation and we're hands on so when you work with them, you see their struggles and you take it a little more personal versus a big corporation."
Denton and Collin counties have not raised their pay for employees but both tell CBS 11 News the budgeting talks begin later this month.
Jenkins left open the idea the court might revisit another pay bump in the future.