Substandard wages, dead-end jobs and fewer opportunities face a growing segment of Utah's population.
In fact, nearly half of all Utah jobs do not pay a high enough wage to meet the federal government's poverty threshold of $17,650 for a family of four, according to a new report. And comparing industry to industry, Utah jobs across the board pay 18 percent less than the national average.
It's a bleak picture for Utah's large families, where one wage earner usually isn't enough, and it's a problem agitated by an inadequate public educational system and lack of technical job training, the report argues.
If left unattended, the state will likely face a growing number of families in financial trouble combined with mounting social costs and rising crime, according to Richard Maxfield, former chairman of the Utah State Board of Education and co-author of the report "Career Preparation: Solving a Growing Utah Crisis."
"What we have is kind of a divided society with the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer, and that's occurred during the last two decades," Maxfield said.
While Utah boasts one of the lowest poverty rates in the nation, the rate is largely a reflection of more people holding more jobs, not higher-paying work. Although 5.8 percent of U.S. workers have more than one job, 7.2 percent of Utah workers do. In addition, 61 percent of Utah women are in the work force, compared to 57.5 percent nationally.
Utah's large work force is one factor that contributes to its depressed wages, according to the report. That's good news for employers. But for those who fill 45 percent of Utah's jobs that require no appreciable training, like bank tellers, nursing aides and telemarketers, it means non-family sustaining wages.
"The lower 60 percent (of wage earners) have not improved their earnings at all in constant dollars," Maxfield said. "In fact, the lowest 40 percent have gone down."
Jon Davies, 35, of Salt Lake City, said he left high school with no appreciable skills.
"When I was in high school I had a learning disability and couldn't take a lot of regular classes," he said.
Davies, who is unemployed, didn't attend college. Today he is searching for work as a security guard, which typically pays around $8 an hour.
Maxfield argues that problems like Davies' rise in part from limited technical training offered in Utah's high schools, with a fixation by public schools on sending students to universities to obtain four-year baccalaureate degrees.
"We've still got a culture bias toward a professional degree, and it's hurting a lot of kids," Maxfield said. "We are graduating over 30 percent of our youth with baccalaureates, but only 22.5 percent of our jobs in Utah require a four-year degree or more."
It's an argument also put forth by the National Association of Manufacturers, which projects the emphasis on four-year degrees will result in a shortage of up to 12 million skilled workers by 2020.
"While nearly three-quarters of high school graduates go on to some form of post-secondary education, 60 percent do not receive a bachelor's degree," according to a 2001 NAM survey. "While manufacturers strongly support a strong university system, they also point out that many satisfying remunerative jobs in the future will require a training certificate or an associate degree beyond a high school diploma. These options deserve equal time from school guidance counselors and curriculum designers and equal consideration by students and parents."
Daniel Startup, a Salt Lake resident who holds a high school diploma, was making $42,000 a year as an outside sales agent for a construction equipment company before being laid off in July because of the recent construction slump. He's already been offered sales positions with national firms outside of Utah.
"My brother's wife is a college grad, and she makes minimum wage," Startup said. "I know right now in our industry of construction we have a hard time locating trained mechanics, technicians. . . . There are not a whole lot of people that like to do it because everybody's thinking they have to become a doctor, lawyer or a computer technician."
And while a college education will open the door to higher-paying jobs — the median hourly wage of a college graduate is $22.60, or roughly $45,000 a year, in Utah — many degree-holders are outside of the labor force and employed in jobs not requiring that much education.
"Many parents say, 'Go to college for a couple years, get your general education out of the way and then you can decide what you want to be.' Well, that's too late for two-thirds of our kids," Maxfield said.
One year or more of on-the-job training was rewarded with an average wage of $13.40 an hour, the report said. A person with a two-year associate's degree averaged $17.40 an hour.
The problems of preparing students for the work force extend beyond offering more technical training programs.
According to the NAM survey, more than 80 percent of U.S. manufacturers reported a shortage of qualified job candidates despite last year's recession, and 78 percent said they believed that public schools failed to prepare students for the workplace.
The biggest deficiency, according to respondents, was employability and basic academic skills — poor reading, writing and math abilities.
For example, according to the Utah report, 70 percent of applicants to Salt Lake Community College failed their entry math test.
"The employers in Utah as well as nationally are screaming because people can't read, write, compute or communicate. They're saying this is killing us in terms of a productive work force," Maxfield said.
The Utah report was a product of the Consortium for Employability Development, which includes the Community Outreach and Service of the University of Utah, Utah Department of Workforce Services, Utah Department of Human Resource Management, Utah Issues Center for Poverty Research and Action, Romney Institute for Public Management at Brigham Young University and National Council on Employment Policy.
Part of the answer to eliminating Utah's working poor lies in competency-based education, where students must demonstrate what they learn, Maxfield said, and in doubling the amount of technical training and beginning that training during high school.
"If our families are going to have family-sustaining earnings, there are only two ways to go about it. One is to have more earners per family and the other, of course, is to get yourself more education and training," said Garth Mangum, co-author of the report and a former U. economics and management professor.
Also, tying technical training programs to a university degree would offer a marketable skill along with a baccalaureate, eliminating the cultural bias of not attending college.
"When your graduation requirements are geared to university entrants, you rob the student of the time that he could be applying for technical training," Maxfield said. "You have 40 percent to 45 percent who you are throwing into the workplace without any real job skills. Utah is either going to have to restructure education or increase taxes, and if you increase taxes it is counterproductive economically."
E-MAIL: danderton@desnews.com