More jobs created; but not all jobs are equal
The economy may be creating more jobs; but not enough of the kinds of jobs that make ends meet. Here's a look at one Texas city where salaries are not keeping up.
WAXAHACHIE, Texas -- In Waxahachie, Texas, at her small roadside food stand, 47-year-old Kathy Jones told me she's been struggling for five years to raise herself above minimum wage.
Her high school education only got her fast food jobs. So now she works seven days a week at the food stand just to break even.
"Just doing the best I can right now to just let it stay afloat," she said. "Pretty much what I make, I put it right back out."
Restaurant owner Jonathan Evola pays his kitchen help up to $13 an hour, nearly twice the minimum wage in Texas but he can't keep pace with the cost of living, up 11 percent since 2008.
"My employees need more than what I'm even able to give them to pay their current bills," Evola said. "And I pay above average for what most of my industry people get paid."
"We are seeing a recovery, there are jobs out there," City Manager Paul Stevens told me.
I asked Stevens who in the community is still struggling to recover.
"I think many of those people who are working in the retail sector, who are working in the service sector such as restaurants, things like that, they probably are not recovering as quickly," he answered. (And of course with those wages, it does make it difficult sometimes to make ends meet.)
Wages for some higher-paying jobs in the region fell, too. A computer programmer's pay dropped from $22.79 an hour to $18.65.
"You get the tendency to feel like, well if things don't pick up then how am I gonna make ends meet around here, without making the money to take care of things," said Jones.
In her best month, March, she said she took home $800 - but in the last few months, no profit.
