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Labor Market

Underemployment Survey

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Pathfinders has employed its experience in workforce assessments for corporate site-selection clients and assessments of the civilian workforce in locations where military installations were scheduled for closure to produce this evaluation of the Mobile area workforce. The Pathfinders functions as a site-selection consultant to many of America’s largest corporations. Senior human resources executives from among those clients assisted in refining this methodology and report format. Companies making location decisions based upon these surveys have reported that when staffing actually began, the numbers reported proved to be accurate.

The information presented in this report has been developed independently of the client, and the client has not influenced the findings. This report represents the objective and professional view of The Pathfinders with regard to workforce availability, cost, skills, and quality that a new employer can expect in the Mobile region.

The findings contained herein include the following observations:

• In addition to the unemployed in the Mobile region, a new employer will be able to attract employees from an additional pool of about 69,500 potentially available workers who have indicated an interest in changing jobs.

• Those workers possess the skills, experience, and education to qualify them for the pay rates at which they would take a new job, and that defines them as underemployed. For the purposes of this report, the term “underemployed” is used herein when referring to those potentially available workers.

• The pay rates they specify to take a new job are reasonable when compared to their existing pay rates.

• About 25% of those workers would take a new job for $10.25 per hour or less. At the upper end, the 25% most qualified and experienced will command more than $20.78 per hour.

• Roughly 12,500 people, neither employed nor seeking work, might re-enter the workforce for the proper job.

To determine the boundaries of the area to be surveyed, The Pathfinders applied the same reasoning that would be used during a site search for a corporate client considering the area as a location to determine the locations from which workers might be drawn to a new employer. The Mobile survey area (Mobile, Baldwin and portions of Clarke and Washington Counties in Alabama, and Jackson and George Counties in Mississippi) has an estimated total civilian labor force of approximately 354,500 people. The survey area, referred to in this report as the labor shed, contains approximately 21,300 unemployed people who are seeking work.

While the unemployed may be considered a potentially good source of employees, the type of quality employer that the labor shed is attempting to attract typically does not rely on the unemployed to staff a new operation. As a consequence, The Pathfinders was retained to quantify the extent to which UNDEREMPLOYMENT exists in the area, as well as to document the cost, skills, experience, and education of that hidden workforce.

Published government statistics report wages and employment for the entire workforce of an area, even though most of this workforce has no interest in changing jobs. The report prepared by The Pathfinders, however, includes data only on those people in the area who might change jobs and who would, therefore, be potential candidate workers for a new employer. As opposed to average wages, this report quantifies the number of those workers available for an employer in various wage ranges.

The results of this assessment determined that in addition to the 21,300 unemployed individuals in the labor shed, approximately 69,500 workers could be defined as underemployed: those individuals who would take a better job if offered by a new or existing employer and who possess the skills, education, and experience to qualify them for a better job. Of these underemployed workers in the labor shed, 21,900 would change jobs for $10.99 per hour or less, and 50% of them would take a new job for $14.72 per hour or less.

Additionally, 31% of these underemployed workers have some college experience; 8% have associate degrees; and, another 28% have earned four-year college degrees or higher. As these data relate solely to those individuals in the labor shed who are underemployed, they will vary from data representative of the population as a whole.

The reader, however, should consider that while the number of underemployed workers
identified in the area, as well as their skills, experience, education, and costs, is accurate, all of those individuals would not be acceptable candidates for an employer. Their previous work records, stability, integrity, intelligence, appearance, and other factors could not be considered in the report.

Site searches to identify the optimum location for new facilities have been conducted by The Pathfinders for such clients as AT&T, DuPont, Celanese, 3M Corporation, IMC Global, AIG, Ciba-Geigy, and others of a similar stature. The availability of workers is a critical factor in selecting a location for a new operation, and a workforce analysis has been a key component of the site searches conducted for these corporate clients.

The Pathfinders has applied its site-search experience to this assessment of the workforce in the Mobile region. In instances where similar workforce surveys have been conducted for corporate clients in site-selection projects, the accuracy of the findings has been repeatedly verified as those clients located and began staffing new operations.

Source: The Pathfinders, 4363 Lindbergh, Dallas, Texas 75244, July 2003

Labor Market Overview

Mobile Mobile Bay Area

Source:  Alabama Department of Industrial Relations & Alabama Employment Office, Current as of 06-08

2005-2007 Unemployment Rates - Mobile Bay Area


Source:  Alabama Department of Industrial Relations, 02/08

Category	Mobile Bay Area		Mobile County		Baldwin County
	Employees	Businesses	Employees	Businesses	Employees	Businesses
Agricultural Services,Forestry & Fisheries	1,324	88	1,068	38	256	50
Mining	633	40	353	26	280	14
Construction	21,687	2,457	12,907	1,213	8,780	1,244
Manufacturing	23,587	784	16,142	528	6,113	256
Transportation & Public Utilities	10,358	616	7,858	412	2,500	204
Wholesale Trade	14,759	1,330	11,192	936	3,567	394
Retail Trade	44,717	4,135	28,026	2,482	16,691	1,653
Finance, Insurance, &Real Estate	22,136	2,826	12,765	1,588	9,371	1,238
Services	134,632	12,009	91,035	7,711	43,597	4,298
Total	273,833	24,285	182,678	14,934	91,155	9,351

Source:  Demographics USA 2006 -  County Edition; verified current as of 02-08

Civilian Labor Force* - Employment

Annual Averages – Mobile Mobile Bay Area

*Place of residence basis; in thousands.  Source: Alabama Department of Industrial Relations 02-08

Employment by Occupation

Occupation of Employed Persons (16 years and over)
Mobile County

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2000

Wages By Classification

Selected Office & Administrative Support Occupations

Source: Alabama Department of Industrial Relations Wage Survey, 2004 Edition

Selected Other Manufacturing Environment Occupations

Selected Supervisory & Management Occupations

Miscellaneous Services

Source: Alabama Department of Industrial Relations Wage Survey, 2005 Edition

Union Activity

Alabama is a "right-to-work" state with 12.0% of its manufacturing workers unionized.

The percentage of manufacturing plants in the Mobile area that has organized labor affiliations is estimated at 3.0% with the largest representation in the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers and the United Paperworkers International.

Source: www.unionstats.com; Alabama Development Office 06-08

Union Presence

The Labor Market Information

The Labor Market Information (LMI) is a divistion of the Alabama Department of Industrial Relations. LMI is a primary source for much of the available information about Alabama's employment, unemployment, wages, and much more. The information gathered and analyzed by the division is often made available in the form of publications. Distribution lists are maintained for many of the periodic publications which are available upon request. Click here www2.dir.state.al.us/ to learn more about Mobiles ever growing labor market