Official Website of Ellis Henican | EMPLOYMENT UP—BUT LIVING-WAGE JOBS STILL SCARCE

“Jobs are coming back ” Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, August 23, 2010

It’s the perfect good-news/bad-news story for today’s recessionary times.

The jobs are coming back to Long Island – just not the paychecks.

For the fourth straight month, private-sector employment is up on Long Island from twelve months earlier – 8,600 new jobs this time. But nice as that is, it would be a whole lot nicer if people could actually live off the wages. Many of these fresh positions aren’t paying too much more than the minimum wage.

Good luck trying to support a family around here on that!

While state economist Gary Huth is cheered by Long Island’s “growth track,” the Long Island Association’s Pearl Kamer notes that nearly 3,000 of the 8,600 were in the low-paid retail sector. “That’s not where you want the job gains to be,” she said.

She and everyone else are waiting for the hjgh-five- and six-figure jobs to return.

There once was a time when the LI economy hummed with rapidly-growing professional opportunities, go-go real-estate development and a vibrant defense industry. Remember those? Fewer and fewer people do.

There is still employment in those important areas. But not as much of it, and not as well-paid. What’s filling the gaps are lower-end positions like office cleaner, store clerk and nurse’s aide.

So here’s a challenge for the smart and ambitious, the best and the brightest around here.

As the economy stirs again, as it finally really may be doing, will someone please create some jobs we can actually make a living at?

Even if we don’t, we have friends who need the work.

YOUR NEXT POSITION

1. Unpaid intern

2. Do-good volunteer

3. Migrant farm laborer

4. Au pair

5. Panhandler

ELLIS’ BOOK CLUB:

Ex-Newsday reporter Dan Morrison, who always liked to go places, may have finally taken the journey of his life. The only thing more vivid than “The Black Nile” would be traveling the river yourself. Then again, you may be a little more skittish about contested borders, raging civil wars and tiny plank-board boats than Dan is. The book is eye-opening, heart-pounding and, frankly, all the adventure I’m up for now. Let Dan go.

ASKED AND UNANSWERED:

Any reason to think the Meadowmere Burger King robber might not be a real football player, despite the game pants and shoulder pads? How ’bout this? 5-foot-8, 150 pounds.. Jobs trickling back to LI, but mostly low-paid jobs? Cheer or jeer?…Now Steve Levy wants the Ethics Committee to look MORE closely at financial-disclosure forms? Oh, right. Not his. Other peoples’ financial disclosure forms…The fourteen red-light gotcha cameras that were spray-painted in Carle Place, East Meadow and Westbury – did any of them get any shots of the vandals? Is that really too much to ask of a gotcha camera?…Interfaith understanding is one thing, but can North Shore-Long Island Jewish Medical Center operate a clinic at the old St. Vincent’s in Greenwich College — with a strict no-birth-control rule?….Regarding the live-poultry crackdown in College Woods: How soon ’til someone’s headline includes the phrase: Cock-a-doodle-don’t?

ELLIS’ LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK

JOHN TSUNIS

Like many parents, John Tsunis was concerned, of course, when he and wife, Laura, were told their son Charlie was diagnosed on the autism spectrum. But Tsunis had the business relationships and savvy to turn that concern into ambitious action. Charlie’s autism turned out to be quite mild. But now his dad, chairman of Gold Coast bank who started America’s first Holiday Inn Express in Stony Brook, is leading the fund-raising campaign for the proposed Stony Brook Long Island Children’s Hospital, which will be Suffolk County’s first. With a five-year time and an eight-figure budget, the project won’t be quick or cheap. But Tsunis held a packed kick-off fund-raiser last weekend at Joe Farrell’s $59 million Bridgehampton estate. “We’ll have a 120 specialists, all of them experts at the disease and ailments of children,” Tsunis said. “There’s really no reason a sick child should have to be airlifted away for state-of-the-art medical treatment.”