The local amusement park is building a new roller coaster. To show their gratitude, the city and county government gave them some $900,000 as a thank-you gift for creating 270 new jobs to go with the attraction.
What's the value of those jobs? Let's go through a thought experiment - no pencils allowed.
Remember these are amusement park jobs. They pay seasonal workers a little over minimum wage.
1) Be generous -- average pay $10/hour. But it's an average of 30 hours a week for 12 weeks. That's $3,600 for the season. (30*10=300*12 -- round number math)
2) Median income in this area is about $48,000 so it takes 13+ jobs to make a full-time equivalent. (3,600*10=36,000, 3*3,600=10,800, 36,000+10,800=46,800)
3) That's closer to 20 new full-time equivalent jobs. (2*13=26*10=260)
Now you have to know some specifics about the employment market in the region. Most of the employment in this county is professional white collar. The amusement park straddles the state line and is a short commute from two adjacent former blue collar counties. In this area typically less than half the blue collar staff comes from this county.
Is it still a good deal to pay $900,000 for effectively 10 new median jobs?
Can your politicians handle these concepts?
. < >This work by Bill Barnes is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 US License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://zaitech.com/satellite/contacts.htm.(c) 2008 Bill Barnes - Disclaimer - Home Page - Blogs Home
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