{"id":13253,"date":"2016-07-18T07:25:09","date_gmt":"2016-07-18T13:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=13253"},"modified":"2016-07-18T07:25:09","modified_gmt":"2016-07-18T13:25:09","slug":"montana-ethic-project-how-to-deal-with-wage-disparity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/07\/montana-ethic-project-how-to-deal-with-wage-disparity\/","title":{"rendered":"Montana Ethic Project: How to deal with wage disparity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Barkey\"<\/a>

Joey and Libby Early<\/p>

UM economist Pat Barkey talks about “The Montana Wage Disparity.”<\/p><\/div>\n

This is the 20th\u00a0chapter of the 32-part video series \u201cThe Montana Ethic Project.\u201d This chapter features Pat Barkey, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research since 2008, speaking on “The Montana Wage Disparity.” You can watch the whole video below. Here is how it begins:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“I\u2019d like to spend a few moments talking about a problem that is too important to ignore. That is the fact\u00a0that Montana is a low wage state.<\/p>\n

“In fact we are among the lowest in the whole entire economy. It is difficult to speak dispassionately\u00a0about this situation; it is about how much money people make and that can be quite personal. But we\u00a0need to speak about this dispassionately as a policy problem if we are to make any progress. It\u2019s not just\u00a0your low wages or my low wages, it is the entire economy\u2019s low wages and it is a serious problem.”<\/p>\n

Here is another, edited excerpt from Barkey’s\u00a0presentation<\/em>:<\/p>\n

“Many people equate services with low pay, and that is not true. In fact services are the highest paying\u00a0jobs in the economy, particularly services which require specialized skills. Specialized skills, what do I\u00a0mean by that? A lawyer has specialized skills above a sales clerk. A lawyer makes more money than a\u00a0sales clerk because they are specialized. Specialized skills start with our education system. But that is\u00a0only the first part. They also grow by developing industry and developing niches that can support and\u00a0grow our work force. Skills are basically our education and our experience.<\/p>\n

“Secondly we need specialized demand. By this I mean larger markets. Large markets can support many\u00a0different types of niches. If you have smaller markets, they require generalist jack-of-all-trades, which\u00a0typically support smaller wages. So links to larger markets are critical. That is one reason why many\u00a0economists, many researchers, think that large wages are now and will always be an urban phenomena,\u00a0and they are very difficult or impossible in the services economy in smaller areas.<\/p>\n

“Finally, we should recognize what kinds of companies pay high wages. Of course it depends on industry,\u00a0but we need to also recognize that it is larger companies which pay higher wages on average. This really\u00a0bucks the trend of Montana. We think of ourselves with pride as being a small business state. Well,\u00a0there is a cost to being a small business state. And we have seen that with respect to our wages.”<\/p>\n