This is Part 1 of WGLT’s weeklong series The Next Shift about workforce issues in McLean County. Coming Tuesday: How Bloomington-Normal employers are adapting to a labor market with more jobs than people to fill them.
This is the year that Marie McGough of Bloomington took control of her professional life.
McGough, 30, worked as a server for about five years at Cracker Barrel, including during the pandemic. With an hourly wage of around $2.65, her take-home pay as a full-timer relied on tips – which relied on the mood of her customers, the speed of the kitchen staff, and a lot of other things out of her control.
“I was like, it’s about time I get onto something that’s not dependent on other people and it’s dependent on me performing what I’m expected to do,” McGough said.
A year ago, McGough started as an underwriting assistant at State Farm. She said it’s one of the best decisions she’s ever made, with better work-life balance and a good team of co-workers. And while the pay is similar to what it was at Cracker Barrel, it’s stable and consistent. That came in handy when she and her 8-year-old son moved from El Paso to Bloomington – and her rent doubled.
“I’m making better money now. But it’s still an uphill battle. Like, everything’s more expensive these days. I’m making enough, but will I be in a year or so? I hope so, but if things keep inflating the way they are, I don’t know if I can keep up,” McGough said.
McGough is not alone. She and a lot of other workers across the country have changed jobs coming out of the pandemic, often for higher or more stable pay. Employers have increased wages to attract and keep workers in a tight labor market, with a low 5% unemployment rate.
Here in McLean County, wages are rising faster than they are statewide or nationally in a few industries. That includes manufacturing, where average weekly wages jumped to $1,634 in the first quarter of this year – up 30% from that time a year ago, according to quarterly data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Local wage growth in the Construction (up 18%) and Accommodation and Food Services (11.5%) sectors also outpaced state and national averages.
In manufacturing, Rivian is setting the market, said Tim Harris, associate professor of economics at Illinois State University. A 30% quarterly increase in wages is “astronomical,” he said, though he cautioned that it doesn’t mean a single worker is now making 30% more than they did a year ago. It means there’s been an influx of higher-paid manufacturing jobs that’s raising the average.
What Rivian is willing to pay its 8,000 workers in Normal has an indirect effect on the rest of the McLean County economy, he said.
“For example, if you have a forklift operator that’s working at a tire factory in Bloomington-Normal, they’re gonna see a wage increase just to keep them competitive so their forklift operators don’t go over to Rivian and start working for them instead,” Harris said.
Workers in other parts of the Bloomington-Normal economy aren’t faring as well.
Overall, average weekly wages in McLean County rose just 3.3% in the first quarter of 2023 (most recent data available) versus that same time a year ago, according to the BLS. That lags the statewide (5.7%) and national (6.4%) average.
One reason is that wages simply aren’t rising that fast for two of McLean County’s largest sectors: finance and insurance (around 17,000 workers) and health care and social assistance (8,900 workers). In fact, average weekly wages for finance and insurance declined 4.3% in the first quarter, suggesting a loss of highly paid workers or positions that’s lowered the overall average.
“When you’re looking at the U.S. overall, you’re also seeing lower wage growth for finance and insurance. It’s not just a Bloomington-Normal effect. It’s also a market effect. The stock market hasn’t been doing as well as in previous years, and definitely earnings, profitability and wages are all tied to the stock market as well,” Harris said.
Inflation and wages mismatch
And just like in other parts of the country, wages here are generally not rising as fast as inflation – or the rate at which prices (and thus, our cost of living) are rising. Nationally, inflation spiked to over 6% in 2022 – above the 4.1% increase in average weekly wages seen in McLean County for 2022.
“It means you can’t purchase as much as you did the previous year. So you can’t maintain the same standard of living, even though you have pretty sizable wage growth,” Harris said.
That higher cost-of-living is perhaps felt most acutely in the housing market – which Rivian’s rapid growth has also disrupted.
The average sale price for a home in Bloomington-Normal climbed to $267,000 in the first half of 2023 – up 6.5% from a year ago, according to the local Realtors group. The median rent in McLean County hit $954 in 2022, up about 11% from the year before, according to Census data. Over half of all renters are now spending 30% or more of their household income on rent.
These dynamics have led some workers to make big career changes.
DaWayne Morris of Bloomington spent about 20 years working with kids – his passion – most recently as an early childhood teacher with Heartland Head Start.
But early childhood education is notoriously low pay, and that’s one of the reasons that Morris, 47, left his job at Head Start this past summer. He’s now working for a Bloomington-based insurance company. He said his pay about doubled.
“I took a chance on an opportunity. The money sounded a little bit better. And I’m like, what do you do? I’m engaged to be married. We just purchased a new home. Money’s kind of a necessity right now,” Morris told WGLT in August.
Megan Perry, 30, who lives in a small community just outside Bloomington-Normal, has changed jobs a few times in the past couple years. And not because it’s fun.
“I’m a creature of habit. I don’t really job hop. I don’t like starting new jobs. It’s a necessary evil.”
Perry moved to McLean County during COVID from Pinellas County, Florida. So from her perspective, the cost of living in McLean County is quite low.
Perry had only ever worked retail jobs, so she got one at Dollar General after moving here. But she soon decided to get out of retail.
“(Retail) had always been difficult and low-paying, but it got increasingly more difficult with the pandemic,” Perry said.
She first took an administrative job with McLean County government, for about the same pay, then quickly got a raise as part of a retention initiative. But the nature of the work wasn’t a good fit.
About five months ago, Perry accepted an administrative assistant-type job at a company in the renewable energy space. She got an immediate pay bump – from $17/hour to $20/hour, plus subsequent increases.
“I do know based on feedback from my supervisors that it is directly attributable to my performance, the initiative I’ve shown. But it means the world to actually – for the first time ever – to have that expressed by an employer,” Perry said.
The money is nice, but Perry said she doesn’t think about her current job much in terms of the money. It’s a growing business, and she likes that the green energy field aligns with an “idealist like me.”
“This job is not only amazing for me and amazing to me at the moment, but it’s given me a new direction to move in going forward in life,” Perry said. “I’m only 30. Feel like the world is still mine for the taking.”
